


Seeing Red

by Kate_Shepard



Series: One and the Same [2]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Origin Story, Renegade Shepard (Mass Effect), Tenth Street Reds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 17:29:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12137517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Shepard/pseuds/Kate_Shepard
Summary: When Thane Krios comes to Earth to fulfill a contract, he meets a young woman and changes her life. "Red" has no name of her own, no family but the one she's created, and no future but the one she's determined to build for herself. Thane is a means to an end.An origin story detailing Shepard's time leading the Tenth Street Reds.





	1. Chapter 1

                                                     

 

The snow was loud beneath her boots and she’d lost all feeling in her toes hours ago, while trudging through the megapolis. Salt dug into the soles of her shoes like jagged stones and she drew her coat tighter around her to block the wind that whipped across the lake and howled amidst the towering skyscrapers. It was calmer—relatively, at least—at street level and would be downright still once she got down to the long-abandoned underground pedway. Chicago was known as the Windy City and it was living up to the moniker that night, though the name was purported to refer to the politicians’ hot air rather than actual wind. She wished for some real hot air as she walked the familiar alleyways.

The girl supposed she’d had a name once, a mother, maybe even a father, but those things had been gone for so long that she couldn’t remember anything more than disjointed snippets. Occasionally, she would hear someone speaking in Italian or find herself doing so rather than English and she guessed that it was the language that had been spoken in her home. Or she would catch feminine perfume on the breeze and a still image of a woman with hair like hers and a warm smile would appear in her mind before being lost again, but the image came without emotion or context attached and she could only assume that the woman had been her mother. Her first memory was of the orphanage. It had been all right until the new headmaster had come. She’d run away not long after, deciding that she and Abby would be better off alone than left to his untender mercies.

She’d struggled more than she cared to remember just to survive and had considered going back once or twice when their bellies were clawing their insides from hunger and the cold was stabbing their hands and feet and face or when the less savory of the city’s denizens turned their attentions on the two girls. She had been close when they’d met Alex, a fellow street rat…or so she’d thought. He’d introduced them to his “friends” and she’d been inducted into the Tenth Street Reds before she’d even realized it was a gang.

Surprisingly, life had gotten better once she’d joined the Reds. She had shelter and food and money. She'd learned street smarts and when they’d realized how unobtrusively she could ghost around, the Reds had given her a job. Whether it was pickpocketing tourists or sneaking into enemy territory to reconnoiter the rival gangs, if it involved stealth, she was the one they called. After she’d proposed several successful tactics for dealing with their rivals, she’d been brought into a leadership role despite her young age. When things didn't change quickly enough to suit her, she'd taken over in a nearly-bloodless coup. She knew how to plan and run a gang war. She had a knack for leading people and they listened to her even if she was young and small. They called her ruthless and admired her for it. She called it sensible and logical. She enjoyed the anticipation of planning a fight and the rush of choreographing and directing it. She was good at what she did.

She descended into the pedway, jumping over fallen rubble that obscured the entrance and shimmying along the block wall until it opened up. The pedway had once been a busy, bustling thoroughfare that allowed pedestrians to traverse parts of the city out of the rain and wind and snow. She activated the light on her stolen omni-tool. Long hallways with block walls and tiled floors and the broken remnants of light fixtures attached parking garages and basements that had long since been sealed off and forgotten. Skybridges had eventually taken its place and it was largely forgotten by all but those who lived on the fringes of society, dining on the scraps from its table. The criminal element appreciated the privacy. The homeless appreciated the shelter. She appreciated the lack of wind. The floor tiles were largely shattered, cracked, and broken, but she navigated it with ease.

She gave a low whistle and a pair of small figures materialized from a darkened recess. Gabe was a street rat whom she’d picked up a few months ago. She'd met Abby in the orphanage. The pair of them followed her almost everywhere. She’d insisted that they stay here rather than braving the exposed streets. She ruffled Gabe’s tawny hair. He was only six and needed more reassurance than most. His bright blue eyes locked on the bags she carried and his pink tongue darted out to wet his lips. The boy was far too thin, even for an orphan living on his own, so she drew out a packet of nutrigel and passed it to him. It wasn’t appetizing, but he needed the nutrients. Relief was written across Abby’s dark face and she whispered, “You were gone a long time.”

“Patience, grasshopper,” she said with a smile. “These things take time. Here, take this.” She passed one of the bags to Abby and the girl fell into step with her. Gabe finished his nutrigel and tucked the empty packet into his pocket. Together, the three of them moved through the dark tunnel.

A slight breeze stirred the air. She kept her steps steady and her head high as she analyzed the scent. She was almost certain that she knew every secret these buried hallways had to hide and that included in the air. When Lake Michigan was up and the rains flooded the deserted tunnels below, the stagnant air became fetid and then translated over to the sickly-sweet scent of decay. When someone died, the air carried the pungent odor of violent or quiet or long-awaited death and she could differentiate between the flavors. In the summer, when the temperatures rose in the city above, the earthy scent of mold growing in warm, dark, humid places abounded.

This smell, though, was different. This was the scent of a person, though not one she’d encountered before. This was the sharp petrichor of eezo and something different that she couldn’t name, something dry and faintly sweet and musky, something foreign. Aliens still weren’t particularly common on Earth, but there were conclaves of asari and salarians. Krogan were becoming more popular within the gangs and she’d even seen the occasional turian, though the latter was rarer given their history with humanity and something about their biology that made the human homeworld inhospitable to them, and she’d heard, kept the quarians at bay as well. Batarians didn’t dare travel here.

The smell wasn’t unpleasant enough to be krogan, nor metallic enough to be turian. It didn’t have the cloying saccharine odor of asari, though the scent of biotics made that option the most likely. This was somewhat similar to the salarians but drier and sweeter in an earthy sort of way. It was something entirely new. Curiosity warred with the sensation of being stalked in the dark. She wasn’t afraid. She could go from hunted to hunter with ease. She simply didn’t have the time to deal with a threat and the children were a complication. She kept her pace steady and her shoulders squared, refusing to acknowledge the eyes she felt on the spot between her shoulder blades. Fighting would be difficult with the kids around, but she did know how to evade and vanish in the shadows. Gods knew there were plenty of those around. Gabe and Abby would go where she went.

Her focus was behind her and she recognized her mistake only when she turned a corner into what had once been the lobby of a building to find a group of men waiting possibly for her. She had allowed herself to fall into a routine and she knew better. She mentally kicked herself for her lack of caution even as the kids darted behind her back and she evaluated the situation. The men had seen them. She hadn’t recognized their presence in time to remain unnoticed. There were too many for her to fight alone. They were surrounded with these men blocking her way forward and the alien in the tunnel blocking their escape. She would need only a momentary distraction to turn their attention from her and they could vanish without any of the men being the wiser. That distraction, however, didn’t seem to be forthcoming.

“Well, well,” the tallest one, a man with gaps where teeth should have been and the ulcers that signified heavy drug use, said. “What have we here?”

“Entertainment,” the second man said, pushing away from the cracked marble pillar he'd been leaning against. She tucked Gabe and Abby closer behind her and wished she’d brought backup. She hadn't wanted to look weak in front of the Kings. “And here you were complaining about being bored, Vargas.”

A third man, who’d been leaning negligently against the wall and scraping beneath his fingernails with a knife, looked up and said dismissively, “A distraction, Bates. You wanna be the one to tell the boss we missed the target because you were chasing tail?”

“We're looking for Reds,” Bates said. “She's a Red.”

"She ain't the leader, though," the third man said. "These are just kids."

"She don't look like a kid," Bates said.

“Your funeral,” the third man said with a shrug. “You fuck up again, it’s on you.”

“Lighten up, Elkins,” Vargas said, joining Bates in his approach. “Have a little fun.”

A fourth man peered at her and said, "The Reds are led by a girl. What if this is her?"

"She's too young," Elkins insisted.

"What if she isn't young, just small?" Vargas asked. "It could be her."

She had been edging toward the corner of the room where the shadows were heaviest, but they were too close. She wouldn’t make it, not with the kids in tow. The fact that they were using their names in front of her told her that they had no intention of her leaving this place. Bates drew a knife and began to spin it in his fingers. “Come on, little girl. We won’t hurt you. We just want to have a little fun.”

“No,” she said firmly, weighing her options.

She would have to pass them in order to run. There were seven of them while she had two kids to protect. Gabe was surprisingly fast, but Abby wasn’t and couldn’t keep up with him. Crossing the room wasn’t an option. They were too close to try for any other location in the room. The alien in the tunnels was beginning to look more appealing by the minute. Better the devil you know than the one you didn’t, but she didn’t think that applied when it was seven familiar devils over one unknown. Danger here was guaranteed. There was still a possibility, however slim, that the alien wanted nothing to do with them and would allow them to retreat unmolested.

Help was out of the question. She’d known for years that the only person she could fully trust to help her was herself. She shuffled back toward the doorway and kicked herself again for neglecting her surroundings. The kids would ultimately be the ones to pay and she couldn’t allow that. There was only one option.

“Run,” she whispered, shoving the second bag of food into Abby’s hands. “I’ll slow them down.” Abby and Gabe looked up at her with frightened, lost expressions. Abby was twelve and smart as a whip, far too smart to be trapped in this life. “Go!” she insisted. The children turned and ran. The last thing she saw of them as she drew her pistol was the back of the pompoms of hair atop Abby’s head and the bags banging against the girl’s legs.

She turned back to her would-be assailants. They were moving in, thankfully unconcerned with the kids. She was their target, and for the moment, she didn't particularly care why. If they fired at her here, they would hit Gabe and Abby. She wanted their attention as far away from the kids as possible even if they were momentarily ignoring them, so she collected herself and sprinted across the open lobby. Bates was faster than she had anticipated. He caught her before she’d made it halfway across. He grabbed her by the arm. She drove her fist deep into his sagging belly. He bent forward but maintained his grip on her arm. She began to fight in earnest, trying desperately to break free of his grasp before Vargas moved in and assisted.

Bates spun her so that her back was to his front and wrapped his arms around her waist. She let her feet go out from under her and sank into a sitting fetal position. She slipped through his grasp as she’d known she would do. Then, she wrapped her arms around his knees and shoved backward with all of her limited might. It was enough to throw Bates off-balance. He hit the ground with a thud. She didn’t wait to see what he would do. She ran.

Her chest tightened when she saw Abby and Gabe standing in the open doorway and she cursed silently. She should have known they would come back. The tunnels were dark. They were willing to wait for her by the entrance where light filtered through, but Gabe would have panicked in full dark. She could sense Vargas reaching for her and changed direction, taking her farther from him but also farther from the unprotected kids. She couldn’t take all of them down. She couldn’t stay out of their reach indefinitely. Shooting could get Abby and Gabe caught in the crossfire. Damned if she would let these thugs hurt _her_ kids. She was their shepherd and a shepherd guarded her flock. Vargas’ fingertips brushed her elbow but didn’t close as a shot rang out. Blue light flashed around the room. Bates lost his feet again as he was sent flying into a marble pillar in the corner.

She was confused when she saw an alien she couldn’t identify stride into the room with an unmistakable scowl on its reptilian face. It couldn’t be helping her. No one helped her. No one cared what happened to her but the Reds, and even their loyalty went only so far. She still couldn’t deny that it was, in fact, assisting her when it turned its pistol on Elkins before the human could shoulder the rifle he’d drawn. Elkins went down and Bates followed in short order.

The three men were dead in less time than it took her to process what was happening. She pushed the kids into a corner and crouched in front of them to shield them with her body as she opened fire into the group. For now, she avoided the alien. He hadn't done anything—yet—to deserve death. Between the two of them, the rest of her attackers fell in short order. She wounded one rather than killing him and motioned the kids behind one of the pillars before going to him and kicking his weapon out of reach.

His face contorted in pain as she ground her heel into the bullet wound in his shoulder. "Why are you here?" she asked. "What did you want from the Reds?"

"I ain't telling you shit," he grunted.

She shot his kneecap. "Why are you here?" she asked again over his screams. She crouched down beside his writhing body and said, "I can do this all day. I have nowhere better to be."

"Your boys been selling in our territory!" the man shouted. She reached out and ripped his shirt open and then groaned. She'd _told_ Sal to keep his people out of the Upper West Side. The Priests had owned those streets for over a hundred years and numbered in the tens of thousands. Going up against them was foolish. She had no qualms against fighting for their own territory, even against a larger enemy, but they didn't _need_ or have any right to the Upper West Side. There was nothing to gain and everything to lose.

“Go back and tell Jackal I’ll take care of it,” she said coldly in an attempt to hide her dread. Jackal called the shots for the Priests. If he decided her word wasn’t good enough for him, there would be a war. She released the man and he scrambled away.

She turned to face the alien. It stared at her through obsidian eyes that reminded her of a salarian’s until she realized that she could see its green irises through the darkened lenses. The alien was slightly taller than the humans and if it had been human, she would have said it was a male in excellent physical condition. A leather jacket formed itself to broad shoulders and a torso that was defined even through the material. Equally form-fitting leather pants clung to his legs, hiding none of the strength in his thighs as he began to slowly approach her with a hand up. The middle fingers of his hand were fused together, but aside from that and the emerald scales that covered it in place of skin, it looked very similar to a human’s. His face wasn’t as humanoid as an asari but more than a salarian or turian. The ridges that took the place of a human’s eyebrows were drawn together. He was frowning slightly and she noted that the green of his lips faded into a pale pink in the center of his bottom lip.

She moved to place herself between the alien and the children. “Go away,” she said. “Hurt my kids and I will kill you.”

“I will not harm you,” he said in a gravelly voice. “You are safe now.”

“Nowhere is safe,” she disagreed.


	2. Chapter 2

The child was Earth’s version of a duct rat. _Drala’fa_. The hems of the dark blue pants she wore had been worn away some time ago and they were slightly too short for her. They were ripped open, revealing knobby and scabby knees that reminded him of Mouse. He thought that she could not be much older than he had the first time he had taken a life. The shape of her body placed her on the cusp between child and woman, but she was shorter than most of the human females in her age range that he’d come across, likely caused by a lack of nutrition. Her fingernails were ragged and uneven with dirt and blood caked under them. They had curled into fists when she had first regarded him, but now they were behind her back, framing the smaller children hiding behind her.

It was her face that was the most striking. Human features were similar enough to asari that their expressions were fairly simple to decipher. Hers was fierce. Irikah would like this human. Her face was as gaunt as the rest of her and cut into sharper angles than nature likely intended for her kind, but it added to rather than detracting from her ferocity. Her eyes were the color of his scales and were narrowed in open suspicion. Her dirty hair was matted and dull, but he suspected that it would be the color of fire when clean. Green and red. His colors. 

He dismissed that thought as a small face peered out from behind her. He thought the child was a girl, but couldn’t be certain. Her skin was a deep, rich umber and her dark eyes were lit with curiosity. She pursed her lips as she looked him up and down. His lips quirked in amusement at her frank perusal and the older girl’s continued suspicion. The twin balls of hair on the younger girl’s head bobbed slightly as she finally nodded and drew the small boy from behind the older girl. “What are you?” the younger girl asked bluntly. 

“I am a drell,” he informed her. “My name is Thane Krios. What is yours?”

“Abby,” the younger girl said. “And this is Gabe. He doesn’t talk.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you,” Thane said and turned to the older girl. “And you are?”

The girl regarded him stonily and Abby said, “She doesn’t have a name. We call her the shepherd because the older kids tease her about taking care of her little sheep. That’s us. The sheep, I mean. Most of the boys call her Red.”

“What do you want?” the older girl demanded, moving to place herself between him and the children again. Her eyes remained wary. 

He thought quickly before answering. She was clearly familiar with the city and she could be unobtrusive when she wanted. She likely needed money. The similarity between this girl and Mouse extended only to their situations. Mouse was desperate for someone to remember him. He was young enough to still be innocent, to still have hope, to trust. Life had hardened this girl. She had accepted her fate, but was not resigned to it. She owned it and made it hers. She wanted nothing from anyone and trusted only herself. She was smarter than Mouse. She still had needs, though, and he could use those to his own advantage. 

“I have a job for you if you are interested,” he said.

“I don’t work for you,” she replied. 

“You should,” he said. “I pay exceedingly well. If you help me, I will provide you with new clothing, food, and credits.”

“I’m not a whore,” she snapped.

“Nor do I wish you to be,” he said evenly. “I need information on someone.”

“Who?” she asked.

“I will answer that if you work for me,” he said.

She crossed her thin arms over her small chest and rocked back onto one booted heel. Her brow rose and she said drily, “Tell me now.”

His lips quirked in a smile. She was a demanding little thing. There was no mistaking the order in her voice. A voice like that could command an army. “All right,” he conceded. “A gentleman by the name of Frank Vernetti.”

“The crime boss?” she asked. “You’re crazy.”

“I would keep you safe,” he promised. 

“Until you recognize that there’s no such thing, I don’t believe you,” she said and looked down at the kids. “Come on, guys. Let’s go.”

Abby looked between the older girl and Thane before saying, “You talk about free enterprise all the time and we need the money. Why not at least try?”

“Because,” she said, casting a glance at Thane, “Frank Vernetti isn’t just big fish. He’s the shark. Every gang in Chicago answers to him in one way or another. If something happens to him and the Vernetti family traces it back to one of us, the Reds will be done for. Pick your battles, grasshopper. This one isn’t worth the cost.” She looked back up at Thane. “What do you want with him anyway?”

“Nothing,” Thane said honestly. “There are certain…factions that take exception to his methods, especially where children are concerned.”

Her eyes sharpened. “Explain.”

“He sells children to the batarians,” Thane said. “You didn’t know?”

“No,” she said darkly, looking back down at the kids. “Are you going to kill him?”

“Yes,” he answered.

Her lips drew into a thin line and her brow furrowed. Finally, she sighed and looked up at the broken ceiling above them. “Fine. I’ll help you. What do you need?”

Got her. “As I said, I need information. I need to know his schedule and routines, his guards, his security protocols, his strengths and weaknesses and fears, what his household consists of, his allies and enemies.”

She considered this. “His daughter plays in Fontaine Park. He would never let us near her looking like this, but if we could pass for rich kids, we could maybe befriend her and get into his house.”

She was smart. It was an angle he would not have considered. There was a reason he liked using children for his recon. They were resourceful and people tended to be less guarded around them than other adults. They could get into places that an adult would never be permitted. He nodded. “That could work.”

She shifted her weight from one foot to another as she appeared to consider something else. “Where are you staying?”

“Hidden,” he answered. 

“You need a place to hide, then,” she said. “Come with us and tell me everything you already know about Vernetti. There’s no sense in me trying to figure out something you don’t need to learn. The boys aren’t fond of aliens, but they’ll leave you alone if I tell them to. And it’s warmer than anything you’ll find outside of a hotel.”

He considered her offer. He worked and traveled alone and didn’t relish the idea of being surrounded by a group of teenage thugs. On the other hand, Earth was _cold_ and he would think and function easier if he had access to heat. The units in his suit could only do so much and would eventually need to charge. If he was there, she was less likely to change her mind and disappear. He didn’t delude himself that he would be able to find a single human in a city this large and she was too smart to use this route again if she thought he might be looking for her. If he went with her, he would know how to find her. 

He agreed and she led their odd little group into the tunnels on the opposite side of the lobby. She navigated the pedway with the ease of familiarity and quickly led them to a door that had once gone to a maintenance shaft. Now, however, what was left of the floor opened into a large hole. She went to the edge and sat with her legs dangling before turning herself around and dropping down. Abby laid on her belly by the edge and dangled the food bags. When they disappeared, the girl waved the boy forward and lowered him as well. It looked precarious, so Thane grasped the girl’s ankles to stabilize her and then took her hands to lower her down into the older girl’s waiting arms. The trio backed up and Thane dropped easily down into what appeared to be another set of tunnels. Unlike the pedway, however, these looked like they had once been roadways. She confirmed that and put her finger to her lips to signal for them to be quiet. Thane drew his pistol and she gave an approving nod. “Watch out for giant rats and feral dogs,” she whispered. “And if you see a person, shoot. No one good comes this way.”

“And yet you do?” he asked.

“No one ever said I was good,” she said and ushered the children forward.

He followed her down the ancient road to a labyrinthine underground city that was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. When she judged that it was safe, she told him that the city had once been built level with the lake that dominated the edge of the city. The city had been raised to combat flooding. The tactic had worked for many years until rising temperatures and rising water levels had overcome the difference and they had raised the ground level yet again. Doing so had left entire sections underground. In addition to roads, there were the remains of abandoned shops and housing units and even the old subway system. It was bizarre. She told him that entire populations lived their entire lives down here, reclaiming forgotten places that no one wanted anymore and forming communities completely unknown to the masses who lived above. 

When she began to direct them to higher ground once more, he expressed his expectation that they would remain below and she once more cocked a brow at him. “ _We_ don’t live down here. No one would respect us if we did,” she said. “We just do some of our trading here. You can get better goods on the black market down here. No cops. We live up top.”


	3. Chapter 3

They ascended to street level and came out in a rundown neighborhood that might have seen better days but had likely never been prosperous. The facades of the buildings were coated in decades of graffiti, most of it in shades of red that ranged from bright to so dark they appeared black to him, and the various apartment buildings were dotted with boarded windows where people ostensibly lived and shattered, gaping ones where people ostensibly didn’t.

The rowhouses between apartment buildings had sagging porches with drooping roofs and the few skycars he saw parked were broken down and battered. There were slightly more ground vehicles, but many were rusted out and parked on blocks. The majority were missing parts that appeared vital to their function. Slim, two-wheeled contraptions lay in bare front yards piled high with dirty snow. Ice glittered on the cracked sidewalks and driveways and dead-looking grass struggled up between the cracks. Many driveways housed the larger two-wheeled motorbikes that seemed to be the primary form of transport for the residents. Aging solar panels weighed down most of the roofs and he saw the warm glow of lights inside some of the residences through tightly-drawn curtains. Most of the houses were surrounded by sagging fences striped with broken and missing boards.

“It’s a slum,” she said baldly, “but it’s home. Welcome to Tenth Street, Thane Krios.”

She turned in to a driveway and walked up onto a porch whose boards groaned under their weight like they were protesting the added burden when they were struggling just to hold themselves. The boy, Gabe, rubbed his hands together in anticipation as she raised her fist and pounded out a rhythm on the door. Thane heard the slide of locks before it opened to reveal a large human male dressed in baggy cotton pants and a sleeveless shirt. He held a can of beer in his thick hand and cocked his head at her. “Where you been, Red? You’re late.”

“Got held up,” she said, shouldering past him.

Abby waved for Thane to follow and the large male looked at him sharply. “What’s with the frog man? You know we don’t want no damn aliens.”

“Stop being a Neanderthal, Shawn, and say hello. This is Thane. He helped us. He needs a place to crash for a few days,” she said dismissively.

Shawn eyed him carefully and said, “He don’t look like he can’t afford a hotel. Last I checked, this ain’t a flophouse or a hostel, Red.”

“I appreciate the hospitality and apologize for any inconvenience,” Thane said.

“Shut up, frog,” Shawn said. “Nobody’s talking to you.”

The girl drew herself up in a way that made her appear larger than her small frame and jabbed a finger into Shawn’s dirty chest. “Be polite,” she ordered. “He’s a guest. I said he could stay. You really want to fight me on it? I didn’t think so. Now, drag your knuckles into the kitchen and put the groceries away before you piss me off.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Shawn snapped sarcastically, but he took the bags from Abby and disappeared through a narrow doorway.

She led Thane into a large room where a group of humans ranging in age from adults to children were gathered. The majority were male and he saw only one female who might have been older than the girl the others called Red and the children called the shepherd. The woman was curled up around a burly male and her eyes held the vacant, glassy look of a drug addict indulging in her poison of choice. Her pale skin was covered in badly-done tattoos and the majority of it was exposed. Stringy dark hair framed a face that was even more drawn than Red’s and covered in sores that he quickly realized came from habitual scratching. The scent of too many unwashed bodies and the clouds of cigarette smoke that lingered near the ceiling and stained the walls a dingy yellow assaulted his nose. He looked doubtfully at the girl. They _lived_ here?

Over the din of too many voices talking at once and the drone of an ancient vid screen, the girl said, “Damn it, guys! You assholes are pigs!” She stormed into the group and picked her way through the debris, snatching empty cans and food containers off the tables and floor and tossing them at people. “I am not your mamma and I sure as hell am not your maid! Clean up your shit. Vuoi ratti? Questo è come si ottiene ratti.[1] Andrew, you like having roaches crawl on you in your sleep? No? Then don’t leave food containers lying open. Who wasted half a box of rice? This could have fed one of the kids dinner! _Hey!_ ” The room fell silent and all eyes turned to her. “Get up. Clean. Now!” she ordered.

“Come on, Shep,” a teenaged male with hair the color of straw said, gesturing toward her. “Let the kids do it. They need to earn their keep somehow.”

She propped her fists on her hips and said, “Vai a cagare![2] What the children need is role models, not grown-ass men who think it’s somebody else’s job to go around behind them cleaning up their messes. Off your ass, Alex. Quit being lazy. I don’t care how stoned you are. I’m not doing this and neither are they. I have to cook.”

“Who’s your friend?” Alex asked.

“This is Thane,” she said. “He’s crashing here tonight and I don’t want to hear one word about it.”

“All right,” Alex said in a falsely placating tone as he raised his hands in mock surrender. “You’re the boss. General Red Shepherd. You should ditch us and join the Alliance with a name like that.”

“In your dreams,” she snorted.

“You’d miss me too much,” Alex teased, getting up to loop his arms around her waist.

She shoved him away with a snort and a shake of her head and waved for Thane to follow her. “Ignore him,” she said. “Lui è proprio un bischero.[3] They’re assholes, but we’re family. Come on. You’ll stay in the basement with the kids and me. The boiler’s down here, so it stays relatively warm.”

More children awaited them down the rickety staircase that led down to a basement with a bare concrete floor and equally barren block walls. Rows of cots were lined up along the walls and a low, round table with a chipped top rested in a corner surrounded by chairs with uneven legs. She told him that it was their school table and gestured to the heavily-laden bookshelf along the wall behind the table. The books were old and battered, their covers torn and their pages dog-eared, but he saw that she was serious about educating the children. One section featured books that were far above the children’s comprehension levels and he noted titles such as Hobbes’ _Leviathan_ , Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Sun Tzu’s _The Art of War_ , and several books from various religions. She bore a defensive look when he glanced over at her and she shrugged a shoulder and said sharply, “I like to read. So what?”

“You are…a complex individual,” he said.

“That cot’s free,” she said, gesturing to an empty one in the corner. “I think there’s clean bedding in the closet over there as long as no one used it and didn’t wash it again. I need to go make dinner. Can you eat human food?”

“Some,” he said. “Fruits, vegetables, fish. Drell tend to avoid grains and most other meat.”

She raised a brow. “You’ve never been poor, have you? Around here, you take what you can steal and you eat anything that won’t kill you. You are in luck, though. I raided a produce stand earlier. The kids need the vitamins. I’m making a vegetable soup.” He accompanied her back upstairs to the kitchen. Abby and Gabe had broken off from her in the basement to join in a game that the other children were playing. She said quietly, “I try to keep the kids downstairs because it keeps them away from the older ones. They don’t need to grow up thinking that the alcohol and drug use are normal. I want the next generation of Reds to be better. I want to move us out of drugs. There are other ways to make money.”

“What would you do?” he asked.

“Tech,” she said as she washed her hands under dingy water. “Black market tech is where the money’s at. These guys just aren’t educated enough to realize it or understand the potential. Think about it. How much would you pay for an untraceable omni-tool that couldn’t be hacked?”

“A fortune,” he said.

She dried her hands and faced him with a wide grin. “Yeah?” she asked and popped a chip out of the port in her wrist. She tossed it to him and said, “It’s just a prototype based off an existing model, but so far, no one’s been able to crack it and I’ve successfully evaded the police without having to remove it.”

“Who programmed it?” he asked, examining the chip. It was an older human model that had gone out of fashion over a year before.

“I did,” she said.

“May I?” he asked.

“Go ahead,” she said and began cleaning the counters. “Do your worst.”

He traded his own chip for hers and activated the display. She gave voice instruction for it to allow him access and he located the code files. She was brilliant, he quickly realized. He couldn’t be certain without testing it himself, but he thought she was onto something. His own program worked by rerouting traces through a series of bogus accounts linked to falsified biometric data and it was extremely difficult but by no means impossible to hack. No system that had the ability to link to others was truly unhackable, but he didn’t know of any software yet designed to crack hers and developing one would take a significant amount of time even knowing how the program functioned. There were features and protocols that even he didn’t understand. He comprehended their use, but not their design in itself.

“You did this?” he asked and she nodded proudly.

“I’m good with tech,” she said. “Self-taught.”

“Is this the only prototype?” he asked.

She spun around and eyed him suspiciously. “Give it back,” she said.

“I do not steal,” he assured her. “I was simply wondering if there was one available for purchase.”

“It needs tweaks,” she said, holding out her hand and confirming his suspicion that she hadn’t yet replicated it.

He relinquished the chip and asked, “Would you program mine?”

“It takes time,” she said, sliding the chip back into its port with a relieved sigh.

“I would pay for your time,” he said.

“And then you take it to someone on the Citadel or the salarian homeworld and they figure out how to replicate it and then I have no chance at a patent,” she said. “No.”

“I already know the specs,” he admitted. “I could do it myself. I am asking you to.”

“There’s no way you memorized all of that in that amount of time,” she said skeptically.

“Drell have perfect memories,” he told her. “Would you like me to recite it to you?”

“No,” she snapped, looking at the door. “Damn it. I knew I couldn’t trust you.”

“I told you I do not steal,” he said. “I will pay you either way. I will simply pay you more if you do it yourself. And I will not share it. I enjoy the way I make money. I do not need to take your method.”

Her movements were jerky as she dumped the contents of the bag onto the counter and began to chop the vegetables with forceful strokes of the knife she’d procured from a drawer. The muscles in her back and shoulders were tense and her thin arms were tight. She muttered something he couldn’t hear and then said, “Fine. It’ll take me two weeks. Three if I have to work, too. Four times the going rate of the vanilla chip. You pay me in untraceable physical chits, not electronic funds. I don’t have a bank account. You do not share this with anyone. And you give me regular feedback and allow me to install a bug-reporting function that will send me reports of any issues you have with it so I can have real-time data to improve it. You will also allow me to push updates I create. And…I want you to teach me how to use that sniper rifle you carry. Deal?”

“You want to learn to use a sniper rifle?” he asked, amused and impressed by her list of demands.

It was getting more difficult to think of her as a child. He wondered if she had ever been as young as Kolyat. Had she ever danced crazy with her father or sat and watched her mother garden? Had she ever played with other children in a neighborhood where the sound of gunfire outside was not the norm? Had she ever been loved by anyone but the children she called her flock? How had someone as bright and brave and full of life as she wound up in a place as desolate as this? She was undoubtedly drala’fa, but what a waste it was for her to be so. And what chance did she truly have to be anything better than den mother to a street gang? Irikah would demand that he bring her home with him so that she could raise the girl. He doubted she would come. She felt responsible for the children here. She wouldn’t leave them.

“I’m tired of feeling useless,” she said. “I’m a general because when we go to war, I coordinate the troops, but I don’t fight. I can’t help them when they get in trouble and need an extra body out there. I can’t defend myself or truly protect my sheep. I’m good at sneaking and tactics. I’d make a damn good infiltrator if I was willing to join the military. And I have biotics, but I can’t afford an amp and I don’t know how to use them. I need to know how to fight. If you hadn’t been there today, I’d have been raped and murdered and Abby and Gabe would have been killed along with me and I don’t want to think about what they would have done to Abby. Those kids have suffered enough. Gabe _can_ talk. He’s just too traumatized to do it. And Abby…she’s so resilient. She deserves a chance to be something… _more_. It’s up to me to give her that chance. No one else cares. No one else cares about any of us. So, yeah, I want to learn.”

She was going to need to learn more than the sniper rifle if that was her goal. Three weeks, she’d said. He’d allowed a month for this job. He certainly wasn’t going to spend a month in this hovel. He could afford a hotel, but he couldn’t afford the risk of being seen. Still, there was always somewhere he could go and maintain his anonymity. It was more difficult on Earth because drell were so rare here that he was likely to be the only one that many had ever seen, but he had other options. He simply had to find them.

Perhaps he could utilize her to rent a real house on the outskirts of town where he could travel by night and remain unseen. He wondered if she would be willing to stay with him on a temporary basis. He could get her out of here, show her how civilized people lived, feed her, clothe her, teach her. If she could do no better than this, he would feel vaguely guilty about giving her a taste of something she could never have, but she could do better and perhaps it would give her the impetus she needed to get out of this squalid place. He couldn’t take all of the children, but Abby and Gabe could come. He didn’t particularly care whether they did or not, but she had included them in her plan to get close to Vernetti. He didn’t dislike children. He simply didn’t know what to do with them, including his own. He, like the girl, had never been a child. He’d never had a father. He didn’t know how to be one. How she figured out how to be a mother despite her apparent lack of one was a mystery to him.

She finished chopping the vegetables and had boiled a pot of water. When she went to simply dump the vegetables into the water, he stopped her. “What are you doing?”

“Making soup,” she said.

“That isn’t soup,” he protested. “That is boiled vegetables in water.”

“How else do you make soup?” she asked. “And what do you know about cooking human food anyway?”

“Enough to know that you do not simply boil the vegetables in water,” he countered. “Human vegetables are bland. What do you intend to use to season?”

“Season?” she asked. “I think we have some hot sauce.”

“No one ever taught you to cook, did they?” he asked.

“I can cook!” she protested. “Sort of.”

“Move,” he said and waved her out of the way. She watched doubtfully as he scoured the tiny kitchen for anything he thought he could use. Eidetic memory was useful in situations such as this. He could recall information on anything he’d ever encountered, which meant that basic attentiveness left him with a database of information on virtually any subject. Human food, however, was a small database and the lack of supplies here meant he had to get more creative than his limited store of knowledge would allow. He went to the extranet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Do you want rats? This is how you get rats.  
> 2\. Go to hell!  
> 3\. He's just a bitch.


	4. Chapter 4

Thane was sautéing garlic and onions while she diced the vegetables into smaller pieces and a water purifier he’d crafted with his omni-tool purified the dingy tap water. “No one’s ever helped me cook before,” she said almost absently. “I mean, none of the guys, at least. Abby helps sometimes and Gabe comes in and steals anything he can reach. Poor guy. He’s always hungry and he just doesn’t grow. He needs meat. He needs fresh food more than once or twice a month. He’s never going to get any bigger if he can’t get the nutrition he needs.”

“He has no family?” he asked, thinking of his own son. Gabe wasn’t much older than Kolyat, but Kolyat was much larger. Drell and humans were roughly analogous in size and yet these children were all much smaller even than the duct rats on the Citadel and certainly smaller than drell children even accounting for different growth rates between species. 

“We’re his family,” she said. “He watched his father murder his mother and then turn the gun on himself. He was abused as far back as he can remember. No one wants him. He just walked out of the orphanage and no one noticed. He’s lucky I found him. He would have frozen or starved in a day or two.”

“And Abby?” he asked.

“Her parents died in a car accident,” she said. “She didn’t have any aunts or uncles and they couldn’t find any living grandparents. She was sent to a foster home. They didn’t want kids. They just wanted labor and they got paid to keep around. If she didn’t work enough to please them, she didn’t eat. That’s a realistic lesson for an adult, but not for a ten-year-old. She figured if she was going to starve there, she could starve somewhere else where she wouldn’t get picked on by the other kids. She ran away. The authorities found her a week later conning one of the restaurants into giving her their unsold food or the dishes that were returned to the kitchen and brought her to my orphanage. It’s the same story for all of us, just variations on a theme. When Abby came, we'd just gotten a new headmaster. Rumors started circulating about his...tastes. When he started paying attention to her, I grabbed her and we ran.”

“Why do you take them?” he asked, adding the vegetables to the stock.

“Someone has to,” she said. “Besides, it makes sense. Look at us. Do you really think any of us are going to go the traditional married with children route? No. We’re going to stagnate. Recruitment keeps our numbers up, but people die and change loyalties and walk away and we don’t have a morgue rule. People only stay if they want to. These kids will be the next core group. They’re the future of the Reds. They’ll be loyal. They’ll share our values. They’ll be family.”

Thane thought she was too open with her thoughts and had an idealized view of her situation, but she was young. That was to be expected. She had found acceptance here where it had been denied to her elsewhere. Her loyalty to the group was natural and she at least wasn’t blind to its flaws. As he’d intuited upon meeting her, she owned her place and sought to work to improve it herself without outside assistance. He still believed that she could do better, but he thought that even if she chose to stay within this faction, she would find a way to succeed.

“Do you have family?” she asked, startling him. 

“I do,” he said. “My wife, Irikah, and my son, Kolyat, live on Kahje.”

“Parents?” she asked.

“They…gave me up when I was six,” he said.

“Why?” she asked baldly.

“That is a story for a different day,” he told her.

When the soup was ready, she called the children in. They lined up in order from the smallest to the biggest with bowls held in their little hands. He admired the discipline she instilled in them. There was no complaining or pushing or impatience. They stepped forward, accepted their ration, and quietly carried their bowls out of the room to make way for the next person. Only when all the children had been served did she allow him to prepare his own and then called the older teenagers and adults in. She waited until everyone else had been served and spooned out the meager amount that was left for herself. He shook his head and traded bowls with her. She protested, but he informed her that he was not very hungry. He wanted food, but he was not truly hungry in the way that she was. He had reserves. She did not. Gabe wasn’t the only one who didn’t eat enough.

He accompanied her back down to the basement where the children were seated at the table, eating quietly. They moved together to allow enough room to add an extra chair for him beside the one they’d reserved for her. As they ate, she questioned them about their day and listened attentively as they enthusiastically regaled her with tales of their activities. Their lives were mundane and astoundingly normal given their circumstances, but she treated every revelation as if it were fascinating and actively engaged them. It was clear that they adored her and viewed her as a surrogate mother. He didn’t know whether it was sadder for the children themselves or for her that the den mother of this group was a waif of a girl barely into her teens. He was not quite thirty yet and he still felt old. 

The children included him in their conversation and didn’t seem to mind his stilted replies. They were curious about him but accepting of his differences from them. He never would have imagined himself sitting in the basement of a rundown skid row shanty on Earth surrounded by human children and wondered what he was doing here. He did not belong here. Whatever these people did, he was still the worst of the lot. They had no idea that he could kill them all in a single flare of his biotics nor that he had the blood of thousands on his hands. He had begun murdering people when he was younger than the mother girl beside him and had begun training to do so at Gabe’s age. He could not picture any of these children serving under the Compact. The girl was different. She likely would have excelled. The rest, though, were all far younger and more innocent than he had been at their ages.

He pushed away the niggling thought that he should have been at home cooking a meal with his wife and eating it with his own son. Oddly enough, he felt more comfortable here than he did in the warm little house on Kahje with his own family. These people didn’t know what a normal life was, so he didn’t have to pretend to have one with them. He didn’t tell them of his profession, but he still did not have to pretend to be something he was not. These children didn’t shrink from him when he walked in the door. The girl had an idea of what he was, if not full knowledge, and didn’t care. There was no judgment from her. There was no disappointment in her eyes. Of course, she was also not an adult with whom he was expected to spend his life, but he doubted that age would change her much. It had been so long since he had simply felt accepted that he found himself caring less about his surroundings and more about the people around him. 

After dinner, she led the children upstairs again and helped each of them wash their bowls and utensils. She instructed them to thank him for the meal. They filed back down to the basement where she directed the girls into a long, bay-like room with multiple showerheads. While the girls showered, the boys helped her straighten the room and then gathered around the table while she read a story to them. When the girls were finished, she sent the boys in. The girls straightened their areas and Abby read the story while the girl went around the room and brushed the other girls’ hair dry before tucking them into bed. The boys filed out and she checked their teeth and behind their ears and sent two back to correct deficiencies before tucking them into bed as well. 

“And that’s how you get a dozen children to bed without fuss,” she said. “There should be enough hot water left for you to take a shower if you want. The water heater is about a century old and glitchy, so it isn’t unlimited, but there’s usually enough for one more person after the kids are done.”

“Drell do not use water to clean,” he said. “We occasionally buff with sand to prevent a buildup of oil on our scales, but a dry cloth is generally sufficient. I can do that once the steam has cleared. Humidity is harmful to our lungs.”

“I’ll turn on the vent after I finish, then,” she said. 

He had not yet read _The Art of War_ , so he took the book from the shelf and carried it with him to his cot. She’d found a fresh pillow and clean bedding and had made it up for him, so he removed his boots and jacket before stretching out atop the thin blanket. He heard the groan and creak of the pipes as she turned the water on. The sounds of the shower helped dull the din coming from upstairs. He wondered if it was ever quiet in this house and how she tolerated the constant noise. He anticipated that they would go up in the morning to find the kitchen an utter mess as he doubted any of the others would be inclined to clean up after themselves without her standing over their shoulders. They truly did not appreciate what she did for them. 

A few minutes later, she returned, cleaner than he’d yet seen her and dressed in loose cotton pants and shirt. She perched on the cot across from him and said quietly, “All right. Now that it’s quiet, tell me what you know about Vernetti. I assume you’ll want to start in the morning.”

“I do,” he said. Vernetti was to Chicago what Donovan Hock was to Bekenstein or Aria T’Loak was to Omega. He had one child—a daughter—and it was rumored that he had killed his wife and her son upon learning that the boy was the product of an affair rather than his own loins. His brother, the current heir to his empire until his daughter came of age, took issue with his business model and wished to succeed him. However, he didn’t have the backing to overthrow the king and so he’d turned to Thane to accomplish his goal. Vernetti was affable as long as one cooperated with him but quick to strike out at a threat. 

His daughter was a potential weakness, but one that Thane did not wish to exploit unless he had no other option. She was innocent and not his target. Tony Vernetti wanted his niece protected if possible but was willing to remove her if it meant taking down her father. He had stated that one child’s death was acceptable if it stopped the trafficking of hundreds of children every year. Thane didn’t know if Tony’s rhetoric was true and didn’t care. It wasn’t his job to play judge or jury, just executioner. 

The girl listened carefully as she brushed her hair. Now that it was clean, it lightened to a coppery red as it dried and it hung like silk around her face. She was going to be pretty when she grew up, he realized. He doubted she would qualify as a great beauty by human standards, but she was a memorable child. She would be a striking adult when she’d grown into her features. A part of him wished that he would have the opportunity to see it, to watch her grow from drala’fa to whatever it was she would become. 

It was an odd sensation. He wasn’t accustomed to caring about strangers. It was entirely platonic. He loved Irikah, though he was beginning to suspect that they were entirely unsuited for each other and the hanar had been more right than he had wanted to admit. It stung his pride to recognize that he was unsatisfied in his marriage and his family. He felt like an outsider. He was beginning to think that Irikah had fallen in love with the potential she’d seen in him rather than the reality of what was actually there. She tried to love him in the best way she knew how. She allowed him his work after seeing how miserably unhappy he had been trying to eke out a living doing physical labor for people he could destroy without a thought and whose intellect was rival only to a vorcha. 

She hated his profession, though, and lately, it had become more apparent every time he returned. At first, she had listened when he’d told her of the places he had been. She hadn’t wanted the details of his kills and he had been happy to refrain from telling her about them. More and more, however, she didn’t even want to know where he’d been. If he began to regale a memory of something he’d seen while he’d been away, she would cut into his solipsism and change the subject or simply leave him talking to the air when she left the room. Once, he’d brought her a stone he’d found that had reminded him of her eyes and she had refused to accept it, calling it a blood gift. She preferred to pretend that he’d simply gone out for groceries and pick up like he’d never been gone at all. 

Her rejection of what he was stung and returning home had ceased to bring him joy. He no longer anticipated returning to Kahje where he felt like he was a failure in the eyes of his son and a disappointment in the eyes of his wife. It was easier to simply not go home. It was easier to accept jobs that took him further from them for longer periods of time. It was easier to simply remain in his battle sleep. He was an assassin. That was all he had ever been and all he knew how to be. It was an inherent part of who he was and Irikah could not accept that; therefore, she could not accept him. 

Thane now knew more about the children sleeping in their cots around him than he did about Kolyat, but he found it increasingly difficult to bridge that divide. It took longer for his son to accept him every time he returned. The last time he was home, the boy had treated him like an utter stranger until he’d left again. He had tried, but the call for this job had come in just as he’d begun to feel like he was making progress. As soon as he’d turned his attention to work, the moment had been lost. He knew Mouse better than he knew his own child. He was a failure as a father. The hell of it was that he had no idea what to do about it short of quitting his profession and returning to menial labor that would keep him home and that was not an option. He could only hope that Kolyat would someday forgive him.

The girl laid down on her cot and Thane went into the bathroom to wipe down his scales. She was asleep when he returned with her arm wrapped protectively around Gabe, who’d climbed onto the cot with her. Thane stared up at the water-stained ceiling as he contemplated his situation. She wasn’t going to leave any of these kids. That meant that he would have to either remain here, bring all of the kids, or find his own place to stay and simply have her there to train her when she wasn’t busy. The latter was impractical. Between the children, her job for him, working on his omni-tool, and training, she wouldn’t have time to commute. He did not want to stay here. He was going to have to accommodate the children. An idea began to germinate. He lay in the dark for a long time considering the option and wondering why he cared.

The following morning, he took the girl with no name, Abby, and Gabe into the city to shop. It quickly became apparent that doing so in person was going to be easier said than done. He couldn’t go with them and risk being seen anywhere in the city. The trio didn’t make it through the doors before being run out by security mechs or employees. After the fifth rejection, she looked up at him and said, “This isn’t going to work. No one is going to let a street rat in. We can’t go into a grocery store without being followed by a security drone. They think we’re going to shoplift. Even showing my credit chit doesn’t work because they assume that’s stolen.”

Normally, he would simply order through the extranet. Unfortunately, no one would deliver to Tenth Street. He asked where she had gotten the children’s jackets and shoes and she admitted that she had stolen them from a street vendor. New York was only an hour by skycar and his presence there would not necessarily be associated with a man’s death a month later in Chicago, so he rented a vehicle and drove the four of them east. 

They were no more welcome there than they were in Chicago until he found an asari-run store and told the shopkeeper that he was adopting the trio of orphans and needed appropriate clothing before taking them home to Kahje. The asari was sympathetic to his plight, especially after running his credit chit, and personally assisted the children with acquiring a new wardrobe. The excitement on Abby’s face when she told him she hadn’t had clothes that were really, truly new since her parents died made the trouble worth it. Gabe put on the thick parka the girl suggested and refused to take it off even when they were inside. 

The drala’fa herself, though, was the most remarkable transformation. When she walked out of the dressing room in a pair of clean, new pants she called blue jeans and a heavy sweater with a pair of black leather boots on her feet and a coat slung over her shoulder, he thought that he wouldn’t have recognized her had the last he’d seen of her been the grubby urchin he’d met the day before. She shyly picked out a knit hat and a matching scarf. He caught her holding the gloves he’d found for her up to her face with an excited smile that finally made her look her age. Her emerald eyes glittered happily and he froze in shock when she threw her arms around his waist in a hug and said vehemently, “Thank you.”

He awkwardly patted her back and said, “You are welcome.” Remembering her pride and anticipating that it would eventually overcome her excitement, he added, “This is not charity. You will earn it. It is simply an…advance on your payment.”

“I know,” she said, releasing him. “You still didn’t have to go to all of this trouble and you did. For a stone-cold killer, you’re a nice guy, Krios.” She looked down at the gloves she still held and said in a wavering voice, “You have no idea. With this, I can go into a store and actually _buy_ food for the kids. I can walk around the city without worrying about frostbite. I can…when my prototype is ready, I can go somewhere and pitch the idea without being laughed out because people assume I’m stupid because I’m dirty. It seems like such a little thing, but humans place _so much_ importance on appearance. The right clothes can make the difference between starving and eating or receiving medical care when we need it rather than assumed to be a drug-seeker. The kids could…they could go to a _real_ school with real teachers. They can play in a park without being run off. Their lives can be _better_.” 

Moisture glittered in her eyes and she tilted her head back and sniffed. “I’m sorry. I just…thank you. New clothes aren’t going to magically fix all our problems, but it can make so many things better. Abby and Gabe can go to school. And when I finish this job for you, I can do this for the other kids and they can go, too. I won’t even have to go to a different city to do it. I can just walk in the doors. I’ve never…everything we make goes to help the group and there were always more important things than what I need. Tuco’s mom needs new windows and the kids need shoes and there are so many mouths to feed and what we do isn’t that lucrative yet.”

Thane considered her words. If appropriate clothing and—depending on how the system worked—a better address could get the younger kids into school, it would give her more time to work for him and would mean that the children wouldn’t be underfoot all day. It would make his job easier. And she planned to use her money for this anyway, so it wouldn’t hurt to advance a little more. He trusted her to keep her word. Even the omni-tool program would be worth far more than what he would spend here. There was no harm in making sure the rest of the children were taken care of. They were already here, after all.

“If you know the other children’s sizes, you can go ahead and get theirs as well,” he said.

“You’re shitting me,” she said.

“No shit,” he said with a hint of a smile as an unfamiliar warmth crept through him. It had been so long since anyone had looked at him like that and it was such a rare occurrence that he wanted to treasure it. These children made him feel ten feet tall. She looked at him like he’d just harnessed a star and presented it to her on a bed of gemstones. Kolyat had not looked at him that way since the boy had been a very young child. Neither, for that matter, had Irikah. The last time anyone had looked at him this way had been when he’d taken the holo of Mouse. He had no one else in his life to compare these kids to. This was a look he would want to come home to.


	5. Chapter 5

“Why are we here?” she asked Thane several hours later after stopping by the house to give the kids their new clothes. They’d insisted on trying them on immediately and she’d had to make them take another shower before doing so because she was not going to allow them to put clean clothes on bodies they’d somehow already managed to get dirty. They’d been disappointed when she’d made them change back into their old clothes, but had squealed in delight when she’d said the garments were for school. 

Thane had spent most of that time on his omni-tool intently researching something and when she’d finished with the kids, he’d asked her to accompany him somewhere. He’d given her the address but nothing more and had granted only an enigmatic smile as he’d followed her through the city on foot. The address had not been very far from Tenth Street, but it might as well have been in another world. This was the kind of neighborhood she’d only read about in books. 

There were no broken apartment buildings. The residences were all houses. There were no sagging porches or roofs. The curtains inside were mostly open to allow the sun in. The skycars in pristine driveways were functional if not brand new. It wasn’t luxurious, but it was neat and comfortable. She felt entirely out of place, especially when they passed a young mother sitting on a porch watching her children play in the clean, white snow. Nothing here was tagged. This was a neighborhood of homes. Gangs did not belong here. 

“You will see,” he said cryptically as he scanned his omni-tool over the lock. To her surprise, it opened. 

“Are we breaking in?” she asked. He must have hacked the lock. But why? He had no need to break into people’s houses and steal things and this neighborhood wasn’t in the Vernettis’ territory. 

“No,” he said. “Disappointed?”

“No,” she answered. “Just confused. I really don’t belong here, Thane.”

“Why?” he asked, opening the door and holding it for her. 

“Have you met me?” she asked. “This is suburbia. I don’t fit in here. They don’t like my kind here.”

“It’s fine,” he said soothingly. “Come in.”

She bit her lip and did as he asked. She felt a little bit nervous. He hadn’t given her any indication that he saw her as anything other than a particularly smart kid, but she knew what men expected from girls like her. Going into an empty house with him was stupid. She knew it was stupid. She had no reason to trust him and she knew she couldn’t overpower him. She wished she hadn’t come. She liked Thane. She didn’t want that to change. “What are we doing?” she asked again.

He must have read the concern in her face because this time, he answered. “I am considering renting this house for the month that I am here. I would like your opinion on it,” he said. “I am not going to hurt you.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling suddenly ashamed. “I’m sorry, Thane. I didn’t mean to—”

“No,” he said gently. “I should have considered that you might be concerned. I am sure that you are wise to do so and have reason. I will not do that to you. My intentions are completely honorable. You have nothing to fear from me. Do not apologize for considering your own safety. I am still a stranger to you.”

She nodded and went farther into the house. It was easily twice the size of the row house on Tenth Street and as different as night from day. The floors were gleaming hardwood. The walls were painted a neutral sandy color. The windows were clean and unbroken and let light pour into the massive sitting room. The kitchen was bigger than any she’d seen and had everything she could imagine wanting when cooking a meal. There was a bedroom at least as big as her basement with an attached bathroom and another bath in the hallway that connected to a second bedroom. She followed him up the stairs and found two more bedrooms almost as big as the master. The house was already furnished. She couldn’t picture herself even sitting on the couch, much less sleeping in one of the massive beds. So, this was how the rest of the world lived. For the first time, she felt truly ashamed of the row house.

“This seems like a lot of space for just one person,” she finally said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t want something a little bit smaller?”

“I had thought that perhaps you and the children would like to stay here with me while I am here,” he said, stopping her in her tracks. 

“You want us to stay _here_?” she asked incredulously. 

“It would only be a month, but that month would allow you to enroll the children in school. It would be simpler than expecting you to commute along with your other duties. We would have more time to train if that is truly what you want. You would have your own space. And it would give the others time to see what that house would be like without you there to do the majority of the work.”

“You want us to stay here,” she repeated, attempting to wrap her mind around the request. She had to admit that it made a certain kind of sense. She would kill to get to live somewhere like this even if it was temporary. The kids would love it. There was a huge backyard outside. They could play out there without risk of being shot accidentally. Depending on the amount of the rent and what he paid her, they could potentially remain here for more than a month. She could get the kids into a much better school that way. There was no reason not to do it. Except… “The kids will need to bring their cots. A single bed won’t work.”

“I thought that the boys could share this room,” he said, “and the girls the one across the hall. You would have your own room downstairs. Alternatively, if they are all accustomed to being together, they could take the master and you and I could take these rooms or you could use the other one downstairs. It is up to you.”

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“Because I can,” he answered. “Because it is ultimately more convenient for me.”

That was an answer she could understand. Generosity from others was a concept that was foreign to her, but personal gain was familiar. She looked around the house again and nodded. There was no requirement to actually live on Tenth Street even for her, though it was easier when she was in their midst and could keep an eye on them. The house there was where they went when they had nowhere else to go. The guys would like having the kids out from underfoot for a while. And the kids would love it. “All right,” she said.

Her omni-tool pinged and she opened it to find a message from Alex. _You’re needed at the warehouse. Now._ That wasn’t good. The warehouse was where they stored their goods and they had a big potential buyer coming next week. One of the South Side biker gangs were looking for a new supplier for their weapons and were considering the Reds. If they could land that, it would be the first step in moving the Reds out of the drug trade and into far more profitable weapons trafficking, which would open the doors to her tech plan. The Reds were never going to be legit. She couldn’t change them that much. She didn’t really care to try. Society had done nothing for any of them. She didn’t give any credence to whether it accepted them or not. 

She just wanted to make it better for her people. As it stood now, the Reds were little more than a loose coalition of misfits just trying to survive. She’d created structure, rules, and given them leadership. Things were getting better, but they’d never go higher than they were right now unless something changed. She wanted them to make enough money to improve their own neighborhoods and better their own lives without help from the outside. She would do whatever it took to accomplish that goal and selling drugs wasn’t working. Drugs were easier to get than ever, especially with the growing connectedness with the rest of the galaxy. Most alien species cared less about drugs than humanity did and most had no laws about them. Acquiring them was now as simple as transporting them from the Citadel or turian space or Illium or Omega into Systems Alliance space. The market was flooded. 

Weapons were readily available as well, of course, but there was still a big enough risk that most of the gangs went for the easier—if less profitable—product. If the Reds could make a name for themselves in the weapons’ market, then the move from guns to tech would be easier. Everyone in this business used omni-tools. Everyone wanted to be untraceable. Those had been mutually exclusive before her idea. The Reds would make a fortune and that money would go into the community.

But now it seemed that was being threatened. Alex wouldn’t call her to the warehouse unless there was a problem. She shook her head and said, “I have to go. There’s an issue.”

“I will accompany you,” he offered. 

Her first thought was to say no. Then she took another look at him. He was strong. He was a biotic. He knew how to use the guns he kept with him at almost all times. If the issue involved another gang, he might be able and willing to help. If nothing else, he could protect the kids. “Hurry, then,” she said.

The warehouse was situated at the point where the neighborhood gave way to abandoned industrial facilities. Guards were posted at all times and LOKI and YMIR mechs secured the interior of the facility. She would have said that it was as secure as it could be until they arrived to find Alex looking thunderous with the rest of the leadership gathered around him and that day’s guards wearing fearful expressions. Alex broke off and glowered at Thane, but didn’t comment. There were bigger issues than a non-member alien having access to their warehouse. She followed Alex through the open doors and stopped as her heart sank. It was empty. Every crate was gone, every shipping container was cleared out, and the only thing that remained were the pieces of destroyed security mechs. The back wall bore a cleanly-cut hole large enough for a YMIR mech to walk through. The assault rifles, the SMGs, the rocket and grenade launchers, the _Cain_ that was the most valuable thing they’d ever held were all gone. 

“What. Happened?” she said in a low, flat voice.

Alex shouted, “McKinney, Rogers, Kyle, Franks! Get your asses over here and tell the General what you told us.”

The four failed guards scurried to do as he bid. She would have laughed at the sight of the big, burly men supplicating a street rat a quarter their size if the situation hadn’t been so dire. If they had to cancel the deal with the bikers, their credibility would be shot. This chance would never come again. They would continue to be small-time drug dealers and traffickers stealing skycars and robbing people on the side for extra credits. Any chance they had to be more would be finished. So, she listened as they described the raid. Thirty men, all in blue armor, had rushed the facility. They hadn’t realized anyone was even there until the LOKI mechs activated. 

“How long would it take to cut a hole that size with an omni-blade?” she asked gathered group. 

“Ten minutes for one person attempting to do so quietly,” Thane answered. “Less for an organized group working together.”

“You’re telling me that all four of you missed thirty men coming onto the property, disabling the proximity sensors, taking the time to cut a hole in the wall, and getting far enough in to activate the mechs?” she asked the guards. “You’re supposed to be doing checks of the facility every five minutes. You should have caught them at least twice. And how, exactly, did they manage to get everything out without you stopping them?”

“We tried!” Rogers exclaimed.

“Then why are you still alive?” she asked coldly, holding out her hand in Alex’ direction. She felt the cold grip of the pistol against her palm and the whir as it expanded. The four guards began to babble desperately, attempting to excuse their failure. She simply raised the pistol and shot each of them in turn. “Next time, don’t put cowards on guard duty,” she said to Alex as she returned his pistol. Beside her, she saw Thane raise a brow ridge. “Something to say?” she asked.

He gestured with his head and she followed him a few steps away from the group and crossed her arms over her chest. He said quietly, “I thought you said you didn’t know how to fight.”

“I don’t,” she said. “I do know how to kill people. There’s a difference.”

“You are not just another…member of this gang,” he said.

“Thug,” she corrected. “You can say it. We’re thugs.”

“Another thug, then,” he said. “They answer to you. You are their leader.”

“Damn straight,” she said. “These are _my_ people. You didn’t know?”

“You are a child, Drala’fa,” he said, clearly still trying to comprehend what he’d witnessed.

“No one’s a child on the streets,” she said. “I started at the bottom just like everybody else. When they saw that I had skills that made me valuable, I was promoted. I didn’t like the direction they were taking, so I killed the so-called leaders and staged a coup. They can’t understand me, so they think I’m insane. They don’t love me. They’re afraid of me. So, they do as I say because they are afraid of what I will do if they don’t and because they know I’ll take care of them. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to find out who stole our goods.”

“Blue Suns,” he said immediately. “A mercenary group, likely hired by someone else.”

“The bikers,” she realized. “Around here, people do their own dirty work. They don’t hire out for it unless they have a reason to keep their involvement under wraps. In that case, temporary alliances may form. We don’t use mercs. However, they probably wouldn’t have trusted another gang not to simply keep the weapons, so they needed professionals. This way, they get the guns without paying for them and they damage our reputation in the process so that no one will use us in the future. If we can’t move the product, then our suppliers will back out and find someone who can and there they’ll be.”

She turned on her heel and barked for Alex. He came at a jog and walked with her through the facility as she double-checked to ensure that everything was gone. “I need a copy of the inventory and all of the information you have on the Bloody Devils. Membership, facilities, base of operations. I want to know who their leaders are, who their enforcers are, where their spouses live, where their kids go to school. I want to know this group inside and out by midnight tonight. I need someone in their territory to verify that they receive the shipment and find out where they’re taking it. Get your guy to call the alderman and have him get the PD on it. I’m sure he’s got cops in his pocket even on the South Side. Oh, and get the FNG to clean this shit up. We’re going to need new mechs.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” Alex said and ran to join the others. She stood in the center of her empty warehouse and seethed.


	6. Chapter 6

The following morning, Thane stood in a corner of the dining area with his hands clasped behind his back. Drala’fa stood at the head of the dining table with a flickering holo projector in front of her. Alex, Shawn, a man she called Riggs, and a woman he hadn’t seen before whom she called Rodriguez stood around her, waiting for her directions. The holo projector showed the floorplan of the warehouse-turned-headquarters that housed the biker gang known as the Bloody Devils. She had received confirmation the night before that they had received the shipment of stolen weapons and was now formulating her plan for retaliation.

He still had difficulty believing that this child was the leader of a gang. When he’d questioned her, she’d revealed that they numbered in the hundreds and were growing. Hundreds of people ranging from teenagers to adults willingly followed the lead of a wisp of a girl who just happened to be clever enough and cold enough to do what it took to rise. Humans were strange creatures. He had recognized that some of the others listened to her, but they did not treat her with the deference he would have expected them to display toward their leader. She tolerated some measure of insubordination, but he didn’t understand her reasons for doing so. He supposed it was due to her insistence that they were family, and therefore, she gave them leeway in their home, such as it was. She was brooking no argument now, however, and they were giving none.

“We have to send a message,” she said. “You don’t fuck with the Reds.”

“Agreed,” Alex said. “How? You want to fight them?”

“I want to annihilate them,” she said without heat. She was no angrier now than she had been when she’d shot the guards. Their job had been to protect the warehouse or die trying and they had failed to do either, so she had corrected that and sent the message to the next group chosen for the task that hiding would not save them. She had been as emotionless about it as he was on any of his kills and far more than he had been at her age even with his training. Her anger had come after the men were dead and had presented itself as a low, seething rage. She had turned it off as quickly as it had come when she’d walked in the door of the house on skid row and she’d slept again with her arms around little Gabe. That she could kill four men in cold blood and then sleep soundly only hours later told him that she felt as little remorse about taking lives as he did. She was in many ways a kindred spirit.

“Rodriguez,” she said, tapping the holo projection. “You’re the explosives expert. If you wanted to blow this building up, how would you do it?”

“Do I want people to know it’s coming or not?” the woman asked.

“No,” she said. “Make it a surprise.”

“It’s fairly easy for a structure like this,” Rodriguez said. “There are only a few loadbearing walls inside. Most of it could be done externally. If you put charges here and here on the interior and in these spots on the exterior, the whole thing would come down.”

“So, we need to get someone inside without being seen,” she said. “I can do that. We’ll also need someone who can plant the charges outside of the building without drawing notice.”

“Drala’fa,” Thane said.

She looked up and furrowed her brow. “You’re going to tell me what that means before you continue calling me whatever that is. What do you need?”

“I can infiltrate the building and exit without drawing notice while you plant the charges outside,” he said. He hadn’t intended on getting involved in her war, but he didn’t like the idea of her going in alone and could do the job quicker on his own.

“Shep,” Alex said under his breath. “Seriously, what’s with the alien? Is he joining up or something? You know we’ve always been humans only, right?”

“He isn’t joining,” the girl answered. “He and I have business together. If he’s willing to help, I’m willing to accept it and so will you.”

“Are you sleeping with him?” Alex asked in a harsh whisper and Thane thought he might choke.

“No!” she exclaimed. “Gross. Get your mind out of the gutter.”

Thane raised an eyebrow at that. She found him disgusting? He didn’t _want_ to have sex with her. She was still a child. However, he was accustomed to people, including humans, finding him appealing. He had used that to his advantage in his profession on more than one occasion. It was somewhat refreshing to know that she didn’t view him in that way. Given that she acted far older than her age, he expected that she had begun to pursue more adult pastimes as well. Even if she had and even if he wasn’t married, though, she was still too young for him.

She laid out her plan and instructed Alex to gather the others. It would be a full assault and all hands were required to assist. While she waited, she found Abby. “We have to go deal with an issue now,” she told the child. “You’ll be on lockdown until we get back. You know the drill. No one leaves the basement and no one enters. Tuco’s mom is going to stay here to guard you. Do what she says, okay?”

“Are you going to fight?” Abby asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Someone took something very important that belonged to us. We’re going to get it back. Don’t worry. We’ll be perfectly safe.”

She ruffled the girl’s hair and led the children down to the basement. She settled them in before drawing a case out from beneath her cot. Thane watched as she strapped a pistol and an SMG to her hips and slid the case back into its place. “Do you know how to use that?” he asked, gesturing to the SMG.

“Of course,” she said and turned to face him. “I can shoot, Thane. There is a very big difference between shooting someone who’s standing still or an individual coming at me and actively engaging in a shootout with a lot of other people. I don’t know how to do that. I didn’t have the chance to learn before I took over and now I can’t let the older guys know that or they won’t take me seriously. That’s why I need _you_ to teach me. I’m tired of sitting out of the way barking orders while my people fight. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to walk into a warzone unarmed.”

“I simply wished to ascertain what you do and do not know how to do in order to know where my focus needs to lie in training you,” he said.

“Just the sniper rifle,” she told him. “I’m not strong enough to reliably handle an assault rifle in a fight and I don’t see you carrying a shotgun. Long-range lets me maintain a view of the field as a whole and I can brace a sniper rifle. Now, what _was_ that name you called me? It sounds like an insult.”

“It can be, but that is not how I mean it in reference to you,” he said. “My people’s word for your kind, the poor, the children, the forgotten ones is drala’fa: the ignored. You are everywhere. You see everything. Yet you are never seen.”

“That is my goal,” she conceded. “And gods know we are poor and forgotten. As far as nicknames go, I’ve had worse.”

“Gross, hmm?” he asked, recalling her earlier statement.

Her cheeks pinked and she said, “Not _you_ specifically. You’re…kinda hot, I guess. But you’re _old_ and that’s gross.”

“I am only twenty-nine,” he said. “Drell lifespans are not that much shorter than humans. I don’t think I would call that old.”

“You’re almost thirty,” she said. “You’re old.”

“You, dear, are simply very young,” he told her.

“Same thing,” she said dismissively.

He wondered how they planned to reach the other side of the city, but when her people were gathered, she led him through a door he had not yet gone through and into a garage. They were not as lacking in transportation as he had thought. They simply kept it hidden. “Why do you walk everywhere if you have a vehicle?” he asked as he slid into the back seat of the skycar beside her. Alex drove and Rodriguez took the seat beside him.

“I’m not old enough to drive yet,” she said. “Getting a ticket for driving without a license would just be stupid. Besides, fuel is expensive. Walking is free.”

“As I said,” he said with a smirk. “Young.”

They remained in convoy until they approached the rivals’ territory and then split off to approach from separate directions to avoid attention. Alex parked the skycar a safe distance from the bikers’ headquarters and Rodriguez handed out the charges and explained how to set them. Drala’fa tucked hers into an oversized bag she carried and Thane placed his in an interior pocket of his jacket. He utilized shadows and cover to move unseen while she walked openly down the cracked sidewalk, looking like just another kid walking home from school.

They reached the building that housed the gang and she seemed pleased to see that most of the parking slots for the bikes were empty. It was the middle of a weekday and appeared that few were here. It made no difference to Thane. He could do what needed to be done even if there was a crowd of people. He was glad, however, that the risk to her was minimized. She stopped near the corner of the tall fence that surrounded the facility and activated her omni-tool. Her relaxed posture and eager smile suggested that she was responding to a message from a boyfriend rather than executing a complicated hack of the facility’s security systems. He had identified several weaknesses simply from the information they’d had before and discovered seven more now that the building was in sight. When she completed her hack, he sent a message to her outlining what he’d noted. She gave a subtle nod before walking into a shadowy corner and vanishing.

He wasted no time getting through the fence and into the building through a ventilation shaft in the roof. Those were notorious security blind spots and he took shameless advantage of them. Rodriguez had identified two weak points in vital structural locations and it took him less than two minutes to drop from the ceiling, plant the charges in unobtrusive places that were unlikely to be noticed, and return to the vents. His portion of this job was finished. Drala’fa was waiting for him when he exited the building and they returned to the skycars the way they came.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked when he joined her. “Why not simply reclaim your property?”

She fixed him with a level look and said, “It isn’t just that they stole from me. They put my people at risk. If we let this happen without retaliation, we become a target for anyone out there who wants to fuck with us. The next group may not go for our stuff. They may come for us. I can’t allow that to happen. If we engage in a traditional gang war, people on both sides will die. This ensures that their people are the ones to do it, not ours. It also sends a message that we are not to be fucked with. We exterminate all of them and the next group will think twice before looking at us as a target. In the long run, it reduces loss of life.”

“Are you truly going to kill their children?” he asked.

“Of course not,” she said. “However, their allies may consider retaliating on their behalf. If we make it clear that we spared the wives and children this time but won’t again, it again reduces our risk. Make no mistake, I would burn this city to the ground if it meant protecting my people. That doesn’t mean I’m going to do it otherwise. I don’t like killing innocents. They should be protected.”

“The way you were not,” he guessed.

“Right,” she said tersely and turned away.

Several hours later, they watched from a distance as a stream of motorbikes flowed into the facility. Drala’fa had learned that there was a club meeting scheduled for that evening. Attendance was mandatory. Everyone was there. Thane thought it showed their hubris that they would meet so openly after what they had done, but they likely doubted that the Reds had put the pieces together so quickly and thought themselves safe. Had he not recognized the description of the mercenaries’ painted armor, it might have taken more time for her to figure it out. As it was, their guard was not yet up and that would be their downfall.

Drala’fa moved her people into place under cover of nightfall and he stood alongside her as she activated her omni-tool. “Remember,” she said, “no survivors. No mercy. No quarter. Rodriguez, set the timer.”

Beside him, Alex leaned in and said in an undertone, “Never piss off the General, frog man. She’s meaner than you are.”

“I must admit it is surprising to me that you follow such a young girl,” Thane said as he ran a mental countdown.

Drala'fa's second-in-command looked at him in seeming astonishment. “Look around. You see their faces? They’ll follow her into hell if she asks. They’re either terrified of her because she pulls shit like this and sleeps like a baby or in awe of her. We bust her balls at home, but that’s different than out here.” The boy shrugged. “Besides, we’re all kinda strangely proud of her. The other gangs are led by these big, burly thugs. Our leader is more badass than all of them and she’s only like twelve or fifteen or, hell, I don’t think even she knows how old she is. The point is, she can destroy all of them and they know it. That’s why the Devils used a proxy. They don’t give a shit about our street cred. They’re scared of _her_.”

“Ten seconds,” Drala’fa said calmly. "Let's roll."

Precisely ten seconds later, the building exploded in a rush of flames and flying debris. The walls were simply no longer there and the roof fell to the ground in pieces with a series of loud bangs. The roar was deafening, but the scene was almost anticlimactic. The Reds closed in, creating a perimeter around the building and waiting for survivors that were slow in coming. Rather than the showy shootout she seemed to have been expecting, it was quiet. She stood silently amid her crew as Alex took down the stragglers as they appeared. She didn’t flinch or look away as dust and blood-covered people staggered from the ruins and were shot. She watched and when Rodriguez assured her that there were no longer life signs registering, she gestured with her head and four people broke from the group. She watched again as they used their omni-tools to paint a black serpent climbing a bright red human numeral 1 and then added a closed red circle around it.

“It’s done,” she said. “Let’s go home, boys.”

“And the weapons?” he asked.

“Riggs, Rodriguez, Tuco, and Alex will ensure that they’re returned to our territory,” she said.

Later that night, Thane heard a curse drift up from the direction of her cot. He sat up on his elbow and said, “Drala’fa, is something wrong?”

She propped her fist on her forehead and said, “I really wanted that deal to go through. Drugs don’t make money as you can see. I try telling myself I’ve only been in charge for a couple years and that I can’t get impatient, but I really thought we had our big break. We just need one big buyer and we would make more in one sale like this was supposed to be than in a year of selling red sand and Hallex.” She shook her head in the dark. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll find someone. In the meantime, I’ll focus on my work with you and perfect my omni-tool program. If I can get those ready for distribution quickly enough, we might not need to move into the gun trade at all. Good night, Thane.”

“Good night, Drala’fa.”


	7. Chapter 7

“I’m serious,” Drala’fa said. “You should have seen her bedroom. She had a vid screen, a computer terminal, and a music player all in the same room. Who needs all of that?”

After a week of playing in the park with the Vernetti girl, Drala’fa, Abby, and Gabe had been invited to the Vernetti household. Drala’fa was walking beside him as they made their way from the new house to the old neighborhood with a cup of something she called ice cream and was eating it enthusiastically despite the cold. She had suggested that with a change of clothing, a hat, scarf, and a pair of sunglasses, he could walk around without drawing attention to the fact that he was not human. Thus far, the ploy had worked. He rarely utilized disguise as he was generally able to remain unseen, but in this case, it meant he had more freedom to operate and showed the neighbors that there was an adult in the household rather than a trio of children on their own. Abby had informed him that the woman they’d seen the first day thought he was a single father and had brought something called a casserole as a housewarming gift. He had been confused about how a food dish could alter the temperature of the building until the girl had explained the meaning. Human idioms were still unfamiliar to him.

Thane had watched from the shadows as Drala’fa, Abby, and Gabe played in the park. Drala’fa had suggested that allowing the Vernetti girl to come to them rather than the opposite would reduce suspicion. She had bound her chest and dressed in clothing that she said would make her look younger. She was right if his estimation of human ages was correct. Bundled in a heavy parka with the knit cap on her head and a scarf concealing most of her face, she’d blended in with the other children present. Abby and Gabe threw balls of snow at her and she retaliated. He’d heard her laugh dance over the frozen park.

That was what these children should have been doing on a daily basis. They should be playing in the snow and not because it provided a cover for their true purpose but for the simple pleasure of doing so. He had not had the opportunity to play since his parents gave him to the hanar when he was six, but Kolyat did. Kolyat would have a normal life filled with security and simple pleasures. These children should have the same. It was disheartening to think that they had only been there because they were in his employ.

It typically did not bother him to utilize the forgotten ones and he was generally able to justify involving them by telling himself that he was providing them with money that would be hard-won elsewhere, but he also didn’t get to know those children like Mouse the way he did these. He had lived with them and eaten with them and slept in the room with them. He knew their routines and their stories and their future. It was, like Mouse’s, a dead-end future if Drala’fa failed in her goals and he could do no more to help them than he could Mouse.

As Drala’fa had predicted, the girl had been curious about them. She’d looked over at them on several occasions and Thane thought he’d seen longing on her face. Abby had stepped between Drala’fa and the Vernetti girl and Drala’fa allowed a snowball to soar past Abby and land close to the girl. She’d shouted an apology and turned her attention to Gabe, who’d snuck up behind her. She’d scooped him up by the waist and held him upside down as he squealed and banged his fists against her thighs. She pretended to drop him a few times before gently laying him back down in the snow. The difference between this girl and the one who’d stood stoically by as she watched dozens of people die was unbelievable.

The Vernetti girl had taken a step toward them and stopped, appearing torn between going to the trio and remaining near her guards. She’d considered for a long moment before taking another step and calling out, “Hey! Can I play, too?” Drala’fa divided the four of them into two teams with herself and Gabe on one and Abby and the Vernetti girl on the other. Thane had ignored the cold and watched. He had promised he would keep her safe, and while she might be right that nowhere was truly safe, he would not allow harm to come to her when he was present.

Two days later, the Vernetti girl had approached them directly for the first time and that morning, she’d invited them home with her. Thane had followed then as well and had kept an eye on the children, so he had already seen the interior of the girl’s room through the windows. He thought it was a typical room for a child her age, but Drala’fa seemed amazed. He realized that she had never been in such a room before. The idea of the typical amenities enjoyed by children of many species in that age group were unattainable luxuries in her mind. He didn’t think he should point out that Kolyat had all of those and more in a single device.

She gestured with her fabricated spoon and said, “Can you imagine? She can walk into a room and watch a vid while she browses the extranet or talk to someone on, say, Palaven while she listens to music from Thessia. Oh! And she has her own driver for her own skycar. That’s all this guy does all day. He waits for her to want to go somewhere and takes her. She has a woman who cleans her room for her. And she has a pet bird. A bird! Her family can afford not only to feed themselves and their staff, but also an _animal_. I thought Gabe was going to try to stuff it in his coat and take it home when we left.”

“What kind of bird?” Thane asked. She had missed that important detail. “Large or small? Noisy or quiet? Friendly or aggressive?”

“Small, noisy, and friendly,” she said.

“That is an important detail to mention,” he told her. “Should I enter the house, the bird could be detrimental to my ability to remain undetected.”

“Right,” she said. “I should have thought of that. I always look for dogs or other animals when I’m going to break in somewhere. This bird can _talk_. I’ve never seen a talking bird before. It walked up and down my arm and sang a song about a spider and a waterspout.”

“Has there been any trouble from the Devils?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Some of their family members began making noise. I had Alex send pictures of their kids at school and they got very quiet very quickly. I had an idea for your omni-tool.”

“Oh?” he asked.

She nodded and took another bite of her ice cream. He wondered if he wanted to know what, exactly, ice cream was. She said, “I think I can integrate your biotic amp with your omni-tool and shorten the cooldown time, or at least give it more power so that it will stay active longer with the same cooldown. I might be able to do both, but you’d have to be willing to test it out for me.”

“What are the risks?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Frying your amp, minor electrical shocks, discomfort, you overusing your biotics and running out of energy to power them. I’m not a neurologist and I don’t know much about biotics, so I’m not really sure outside of that.”

Frying an amp was painful but not harmful. Minor electrical shocks occurred on occasion when inserting or removing an amp from the implant. Amps were rarely entirely comfortable. Overuse could be mitigated through nutrition. If those were the only concerns, it was worth an attempt. “All right,” he agreed.

“Are all drell biotics like asari or are you special?” she asked.

“Most drell have some biotic ability,” he said, “though it is not universal like the asari. There are more biotic drell than there are turians or salarians. I don’t know yet how we compare to humans as your biotics are new and not fully understood yet. We are, however, almost as powerful as asari.”

“I don’t even know how strong mine are. I just glow sometimes. So, what are you going to do to Vernetti?” she asked as they turned onto Tenth Street.

“I have not decided yet,” he said. Perhaps he should get her an implant, too. He could teach her how to utilize her biotics, but there was no point in doing so without one.

“You’re an assassin, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered.

She gave him a crooked grin and said, “Well, if you ever get tired of making the big money, the Reds can always use someone like you.”

“I am afraid I am overqualified,” he demurred.

They bypassed the row house and made their way instead to the end of the road where the empty warehouse stood. Rather than repair it when vacant buildings were in abundance, they had simply moved the recovered goods to a new one. Thane suggested utilizing the damaged one for practice since it already had freight boxes and empty crates that would provide cover and sniper perches. For now, however, they were familiarizing her with the weapon and working on accuracy. It was a very large gun for a child her size and she was still learning to work within her limitations. She was improving quicker than he’d expected, though. She was a natural. She just needed to grow into it.

He set up a series of targets and she loaded concussive rounds into the rifle. She shouldered the weapon and chose her target. He crouched beside her and said, “Remember, breathe in, breathe out, and squeeze the trigger. Do not pull. Allow your body to move with the rifle. It is an extension of yourself, not an external force. The recoil will affect you less if you are relaxed than if you attempt to resist it. Do not tense in anticipation or your aim will suffer. Absorb the kick. Be patient. Sniping is not a rapid-fire exercise. Do not rush. Get it right the first time every time. And keep your eyes open.”

“Okay,” she said.

He watched in approval as she centered herself and took the shot. A neat hole appeared at center mass of the target. “Good,” he said. “Now, do it again. Target that exact point.”

When the rifle cooled, she took another breath, steadied herself, and squeezed the trigger. She missed her initial shot by three centimeters. “I missed,” she grumbled.

“Try again,” he said.

She did and huffed in frustration as a hole appeared two centimeters above her secondary point. “You make this look so easy.”

“I have been doing it for twenty-three years,” he said. “I am a master. You are an apprentice. Your target is dead. Unless, of course, it is a krogan. Do not bother with anything but headshots on a krogan. They regenerate too quickly unless you destroy the brain and even that is not an easy feat.”

“How do you do it?” she asked.

“My technique would not work for you,” he said. “You are too small. Bombs. Use bombs on krogan.”

“Yes, but how do _you_ do it?” she asked, looking over at him.

He sighed. “Attack from above. Strike with both fists to the eye ridge. They will bring their arms up to attack. Slide down between them and use the fingertips to strike certain nerve points on the throat to counter the blood rage. Kick them in the quads to bend them over within reach, grip each side of the skull using the ridges of the brow plate for stabilization, get a running start and spin as you leap to snap the neck. You do not weigh enough to accomplish it. Use bombs, Drala’fa. A krogan at close range will destroy you. They were the final stage of my training and I still charge extra for krogan.”

“Damn,” she said. “You are a badass. How long does that take you?”

“Three seconds,” he said. “Five if it is a biotic or a particularly large battlemaster.”

“Wow,” she said. “How does your wife feel about your job? I can’t really picture you as a hearth and home kinda guy.”

“She is…less than enthusiastic,” he admitted.

“What’s she like?” she asked.

Thane thought for a moment. In a way, it seemed wrong to discuss Irikah with this girl. His wife and son were topics he thought better left off-limits. He and this girl were not friends. He did not have friends. Outside of Irikah and Kolyat, he had targets, colleagues, employers, and people he used. He was not certain where this girl fell on that spectrum nor if he wanted to further muddy the waters by discussing his personal life. Irikah and Kolyat were separate from his job.

Drala’fa was still waiting for his response. She seemed to sense his reticence, because she turned away from him and returned her attention to the rifle. “Forget I asked,” she said and squeezed the trigger.

She was hurt. “Drala’fa,” he began.

“Don’t,” she cut him off. “I get it, okay? I’m just a street rat. You don’t talk about your family with street rats. I might sully it.”

She fired another shot. This one penetrated the first hole, but she didn’t seem to notice. Typically, he would advise serenity, but she stopped overthinking when she was angry. If it worked for her, then she needed to use it as a tool. “Correct,” he said. “I do not discuss my family with street rats.”

“You don’t have to rub it in,” she grumbled and fired again. “I know what I am, okay? I can dream about making something out of the Reds, but we’ll never be anything more than a small-time street gang running drugs and stealing cars and breaking into people’s houses to steal things that don’t belong to us. I will never have any family but this one. I can work as hard as I can, but no one’s going to buy fancy tech programs from a teenage gangster who doesn’t even have a name.”

She fired again.

“I’m trash. I’ve always been trash. I’ll always be trash. My own parents threw me away. They left me at a goddamn fire station in the middle of the night. In the winter. Outside.”

She fired again.

“And maybe they were right. After all, what kind of person slaughters an entire group of people and feels nothing? I should be going to school and worrying about which boys like me or whatever normal girls do. Instead, I’m learning to shoot a sniper rifle so I can be better at killing people because _that’s_ my life. I’m a criminal. That’s all I am. That’s all I’ll ever be because nobody gives a shit about anybody but themselves.”

“Drala’fa,” he said softly, trying to stop the downward spiral she seemed to be falling into.

“Don’t deny it, Thane,” she snapped. “You’re only here because you need something from me. You aren’t my friend. You aren’t family. You’re just my…boss or something.”

“Drala’fa,” he said again.

“That’s not my goddamn name!” she exclaimed.

“Look at your grouping,” he said.

She looked at the demolished target. “All right. I’m better at killing people.” She stood from her prone position and pushed the rifle into his hands. “I’ll see you back at the house later.”

“Drala’fa,” he called after her as she jumped down from the crate they’d set up on. She ignored him and kept walking. He sighed. Teenagers, it seemed, were difficult no matter the species. No, he thought. That was reductive. He’d clearly hit a sore spot that went deeper than he’d anticipated. “I do not consider you a street rat,” he said.

She paused at the door and gave him a level look. “Yes, you do,” she said evenly. “It’s all right. Everyone does. I’ll finish your omni-tool. I’ll get what you need from Vernetti. I’ll take whatever you give me because that’s what I do. Don’t worry. I will never ask about your family or your life again.”

“She is incredibly intelligent,” he said to her back. She stopped again. “Irikah. She is a brilliant scientist. She is compassionate. She is brave. She is…far better than I will ever be and better than I deserve. She is beautiful. She is creative. She loves to garden. She is hearth and home and light in the darkness. She values life. She wants to preserve every life whether it deserves saving or not. What I do is anathema to her. She despises it. It is the only thing I have ever known her to hate.”

“She sounds…perfect,” Drala’fa said, trailing her hand down the open doorway. “Your son…” her voice became thick and she cleared her throat before continuing, “your son is very lucky.”

“He is fortunate to have her, yes,” he said.

“Tell him not to take it for granted,” she said and ran from the open doorway.

She didn’t return until late that night. He had expected her to come back earlier and prepare the kids for bed, but Abby took over the chore after informing him that it happened on occasion.

“She must be upset,” Abby said. “She always disappears for a while when she’s sad or worried. She won’t let us see it.”

“Then how do you know that is what’s going on?” he asked the girl.

She cocked a brow and tilted her head at him as if it should be obvious and said, “I followed her once. Some lady in the city told her that her mother should have drowned her at birth. She went to the lake and cried. And then she walked in.”

“She is suicidal?” he asked, concerned.

“No,” Abby said matter-of-factly. “She’s just troubled. She doesn’t _want_ to die. I just think maybe she doesn’t care if she lives or not. There is a difference, right?”

“There is,” he confirmed.

His omni-tool pinged several hours later, alerting him that the window to the children’s room had opened. Though he was almost certain that it was her, he went downstairs to check anyway. The children had wanted to remain together, so he’d given them the master bedroom. Rather than their thin cots, however, he’d installed what she called bunk beds. After a bit of squabbling, they’d chosen their spots and he scanned each bed to ensure that they were there and safe. Drala’fa knelt beside Gabe, running her fingers through his tawny hair. She rose and placed a finger against her lips. Her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot and she stumbled slightly in the doorway.

He smelled liquor on her skin and whispered, “Are you drunk?”

“Tipsy,” she said. “Just tipsy.”

“You are too young to drink,” he chided.

“And you aren’t my dad,” she pointed out. “I had two beers with Alex. I just don’t weigh much, so I don’t metabolize it fast. I’ll be fine tomorrow. I’m going to bed.”

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said.

She stopped at the foot of the stairs and said, “I’m sorry for going off at you. I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have unloaded on you like I did. It’s not your fault I am what I am.”

“You are so much more than you believe, Drala’fa,” he said. “Why do you stay?”

“Where else would I go?” she asked. “No one wants me. I’m too young for the Alliance and they wouldn’t take me anyway. I have nothing but the Reds. Look, I appreciate the vote of confidence, but you don’t have to blow smoke up my ass. I’m comfortable with what I am. Most of the time, at least. It’s just been a long day. The Vernetti girl…” she pressed her lips together and looked up at the ceiling. “Her dad loves her. I just…didn’t know what I was missing. I suspected it, but I didn’t know, so it was okay. Now I know and I don’t know why…I don’t know why my parents didn’t want me. I was just a baby. Could I have been that bad even then?”

“Drala’fa,” he said helplessly, reaching out to her.

She threw herself into his arms and he felt her body begin to shake. “What’s wrong with me, Thane?” she mewled.

“Nothing,” he said, awkwardly stroking her hair. “There is nothing wrong with you, Drala’fa. If your parents did not love you, the flaw is with them. It is not in you. There is…something missing within them,” he said, thinking of his relationship with Kolyat. “It is not your fault. You are not bad.”

“I am,” she insisted and he felt hot moisture bleed into his shirt. “I killed all of those people and I didn’t feel _anything_. I’m supposed to feel _something_ , right?”

He placed his hands on her shoulders and moved her to arm’s length so that he could look down at her. Her eyes were puffier and tears cast silver streaks down her face. She sniffed and looked up again as if trying to stem the flow. He said, “I have killed many, many people. Sometimes I feel shame or remorse, but most of the time, I feel nothing. I sleep as soundly as you do at night. If there is some deficiency in you, it is one that we share. It is what makes us good at what we do.”

“You don’t have to pretend to like me, you know,” she said, refusing to look at him.

“I know,” he said. “I am not pretending. I do not have friends, Drala’fa. I do not know how to be one. I did not intend to hurt you earlier. I intended to provoke you. You improve when you are angry. You stop thinking about what you are doing and simply do it. That is all I wanted. I would have told you as much had you not reacted the way you did.”

She nodded and her tongue darted out to lick her lips. “Thanks,” she said, drawing away from him. “I’m going to go to bed now. It really has been a long day.”

He watched her retreat up the stairs before drawing the door to the children’s room closed and following her. She went right at the top of the stairwell and he went left. He wondered what Irikah would think of her if she knew all that he knew. Would she condemn her as a lost cause? Would she recoil from the violence in the girl? Or would she pity her?

He thought she would choose to see only the good and believe that she could change her until that was all there was just as she had attempted to do with him. She would admire the maternal child, empathize with the motherless one, and ignore the murderous one. She would attempt to fix all the broken pieces. Perhaps Drala’fa was young enough that Irikah would succeed with her where she had failed with him. Or, perhaps there was a point of brokenness that no amount of love and light could fix and the only recourse left was to walk through the dark with the jagged edges. She was disconnected and he did not know if anything could make her Whole again.


	8. Chapter 8

Thane’s omni-tool was finished. She had gotten all of the intel he needed on Vernetti. The month-long lease on the property was almost up and they would have to either vacate or renew it soon. He would be leaving in a few days. It would not be safe for him to stay once his job was finished. She would be returning to the row house with the children. She hoped that she would at least be allowed to purchase the bunk beds from him when he left. The kids really liked having real beds and that might ease the sting of losing their temporary home.

It had been nice being here. They ate dinner at the table in the dining room every day like a normal family rather than the little one in the basement. The kids were in school and they came home in the afternoons with stories about their new friends and teachers and experiences. They were learning more than she could teach them. She made breakfast in the mornings—her cooking had drastically improved with Thane’s input—and they ate together then, too, before the kids dressed and donned their backpacks to wait for the shuttle bus that carried them to the schoolhouse.

Once they were away, she settled in to her room to work on the omni-tool and after lunch, she and Thane went to the converted warehouse to train. She was shooting moving targets now and even getting headshots on occasion. He had begun teaching her hand-to-hand and had taught her how to break a human’s neck. He’d given her tips for the SMG and her pistol and had helped her improve her stealth capabilities. After the kids got home from school and finished their homework, she took Abby and Gabe to the Vernetti’s for an hour or two while the other kids played at home under the supervision of a VI drone Thane had acquired. In the evenings, she returned to the row house to check on her people and do what needed doing there. Alex was running a tight ship in her semi-absence, but she wouldn’t risk her people thinking she was letting him take over. They needed to see her. It helped that they all knew that the money she was making working for Thane was going to the group rather than into her own pocket.

All of that was about to change. He didn’t need her anymore. She’d even managed to successfully implement the changes to his biotic amp. He was pleased with it and they’d spent the afternoon at the warehouse testing it. There was only one thing left to do. “It needs a field trial,” she said. “I want to make sure it’s going to work under real-time conditions before I send you away with it.”

“What do you suggest?” he asked, turning to face her as the blue corona faded from his fist. She told herself that he was too old for her to be thinking he was really fucking hot, but that didn’t change the fact that she had to catch herself on occasion when that was all she could see.

She hopped off of the crate she’d been sitting on and said, “There’s a new gang pushing its borders too close to ours. If they’d given me the courtesy of coming to me to negotiate territories, we might have worked something out, but they’re just moving in. Time to convince my enemies it’s a better idea to follow me than to oppose me. Wanna come wreak a little havoc with us?”

“I suppose,” he said.

“This is gonna be fun,” she said with a grin, looping her arm in his. He looked startled, but she ignored it and he simply shook his head and walked out of the warehouse with her.

“You know I generally charge for my services, right?” he asked.

He was teasing. She’d learned how to read him and had discovered a sense of humor. It was stunted, but it was there. She smiled up at him and bumped his arm with the side of her head. “Yeah, but you like me.”

“I do, Drala’fa,” he said. “Arashu only knows why, but I do.”

“Because I’m an anomaly,” she said. “I interest you. You’re too smart. Most people must bore you. I will, too, once you figure me out.”

“I highly doubt that,” he said. “I think you will continue to perplex me until I die.”

“Then I hope you stay perplexed for a long, long time,” she said. “I like knowing you’re going to be out there somewhere. Most people bore me, too.”

“Are you saying you can’t figure me out, either, Drala’fa?” he asked.

“I don’t think anyone has you figured out, Thane Krios,” she said. “You’re an anomaly, too.”

She didn’t want him to leave. She was happier than she could ever remember being. She pretended sometimes that she was his wife instead of the far-away perfect Irikah and that the kids were their children rather than the drell boy she would never meet. She knew it wasn’t right and that it would never be, but she’d never had many qualms about taking what she wanted. There was no other way she would get it. She knew it was just a fantasy.

That didn’t mean that she didn’t wish that he would stay. She would leave the Reds if it meant having a life in the little house in the pretty neighborhood with the kids and maybe even a dog or a bird like the Vernetti girl had. He could train her to do what he did and she could help him. She was young enough to learn. Unfortunately, she was also far too young for him and she knew it. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t had a typical childhood. He still saw her as a little kid. She made do with knowing that they were friends. He wouldn’t ride or die with her, but he was here for now.

He accompanied her back to the row house where she gathered her people. They had gotten used to his presence and didn’t protest when he stepped up to the table beside her. She knew they thought she and Thane were together and didn’t exactly approve, but she didn’t see any reason to correct their misconception. They would learn the truth soon enough. He didn’t try to insert himself into the planning, but he didn’t hesitate to lean over and whisper suggestions into her ear when he saw something he could improve. This would be no typical street-gang drive-by message. They would go on foot, in force, and make themselves known.

The plan worked. They drew the enemy out onto the streets and met them head-on. Thane was the centerpiece of her attack. In his disguise, none of the others would know who he was and would believe that he was a permanent member. They would anticipate and fear him even if they weren’t afraid of her. His omni-tool and amp worked together perfectly and dark energy lit the night-darkened street like lightning. She had never truly seen him fight, but she got a good look at him from her sniper’s perch atop a low-rise tenement. He moved like water and lightning, fast, explosive, but fluid. Bodies fell before him too quickly for her enemies to keep track. She kept any of them from flanking him or the others and finally felt like she was truly a part of the fight.

When the leader of the other gang held up his hands in surrender, she secured the sniper rifle to her back and shimmied down the wall of the building. Her people parted like water as she strode forward and closed ranks behind her with their weapons still drawn. Thane stepped forward with her and stood a few paces behind and to her right.

Their leader looked down at her in open surprise. “They sent a little kid to do their talking?” he asked. “The fuck is this shit?”

“You’re new here,” she said. “You don’t know how things work around here. I get that. So, let me explain it to you. We are the Tenth Street Reds. We live here. This is our territory. You are infringing on our territory. We will not hesitate to put you down if you fuck with us. You have three choices here. Leave. Join us. Die. Pick your poison.”

“I ain’t scared of some twelve year-old bitch who thinks she’s hot shit,” he sneered. “Get the fuck off me. Go home and play with your dolls, little girl. What you gonna do? Sic your dog on me?” he asked, gesturing toward Thane with his chin.

She sighed and shook her head. This was really getting old. She wondered if people would take her more seriously when she was grown up or if there really was only one language they understood. She drew her pistol from her hip and said, “I don’t need anyone to fight my battles for me.” He smirked and she pulled the trigger. She turned to look at the diminished group gathered behind him. “Anybody else interested in negotiating or should we do to you what we did to the Bloody Devils?”

“The Bloody Devils was you?” a tall, lanky man with curly, dark hair asked.

“It was,” she confirmed.

“Fuck that shit,” he said, looking at the others around him. “I got family to protect.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said. She addressed the group at large. “You’re now Reds. You answer to this guy.”

“Finch,” he said.

“You answer to Finch. Finch answers to me,” she said.

“It ain’t that simple,” Finch protested.

“It is now,” she said. “I don’t have time for bullshit. Alex will brief you on what to expect.”

“That was easier than I had anticipated,” Thane said as they walked away.

She said, “It’s pretty simple once you cut through all of the posturing and extraneous bullshit. Men overcomplicate things. When I posture, people laugh. So, I don’t posture. I kill anyone who gets in my way and the rest start moving.”

“Efficient,” he said.

“Why waste time?” she asked. “Look, Thane. He would have just waited and bided his time before turning on us. I needed him to make a point more than I needed him to join us. Did you have any problems with your omni-tool or amp?”

“None,” he said. “It is vastly improved.”

“Good,” she said with a grin. “Think I can get some ice cream at this time of the night?”

“What is ice cream?” he asked.

“Delicious,” she answered. “It’s frozen flavored cream. You know, from milk.”

“Milk,” he said, looking disgusted. “You eat frozen milk.”

“It’s good,” she insisted.

“I will take your word for it,” he said. “What do we do now?”

Her step faltered and she said, “We’re done. I’ve done everything you need. You’ve done everything I asked. You have everything you need to go after Vernetti. And then you’ll go back to Kahje and I’ll be here.”

“You could come with me,” he offered. “My wife—”

“Would end up hating me,” she interjected. “I don’t need a dad, Thane. Go home. Forget me.”

“I can’t,” he said. “Perfect memory, remember? I will always remember you.”

“Good,” she said as her throat threatened to close. “So, tonight we’ll go home and have dinner with the kids and tomorrow, you’ll go finish your job. I’ll take care of the house. Can I keep the beds for the kids? You can deduct it from my pay.”

“I have no need for them,” he said. “Keep them. No charge. Call it a gift to the little ones.”

“You’re a good guy, Thane,” she told him. “Don’t ever change.”

Her step was heavy as they walked back to the little house in the pretty neighborhood for the last time. She was really going to miss him. She dreaded the coming morning when he would walk out the door and out of her life. She might not have perfect memory, but she wouldn’t forget him, either. She struggled to swallow her food past the lump in her throat and had to stop looking at him to get through the meal. He sat in the room with her while she put the kids to bed and followed her up the stairs. They hesitated on the landing and she told herself that she was hard and cold and ruthless and she absolutely would not cry because a man that didn’t belong to her was leaving. She might have been young, but she wasn’t some boy-crazy teenager and he was no boy.

He seemed as reluctant to go as she was. Finally, he said, “If you can guarantee the quality of your weapons, I will recommend the Reds to the Illuminated Primacy as a weapons supplier for their assassins. That should help you move away from the drug trade.”

“Thank you,” she whispered and felt her chin tremble. He was helping her without asking for anything in return. No one did that. She’d realized that he hadn’t truly needed her to do his recon weeks before and had wondered why he’d asked her. Now she knew. He’d been helping her all along. “Why?”

“Because I can,” he said. “I have not had many opportunities to do good things in this world. When I see them, I take them. You are worth more than this miserable existence, Drala’fa.” She closed her eyes as he brought a hand up to run his knuckle down her cheek. The scales on his finger were dry and smooth and glided over her skin. “You _can_ be more. You can be better. You can be anything you want to be. It is not too late for you to change. I believe in you.”

Her brow furrowed and she bit her lip as hot tears welled in her eyes. No one had ever believed in her before. They’d feared her and admired her and wondered at her and ridiculed her and doubted her, but no one had believed in her. She didn’t know how to respond to that. She didn’t know what to say, so she rose onto tiptoe and pressed her lips to his cheek before he drew back. “I won’t forget you, either, Thane Krios,” she whispered, sinking back to her feet. “Will you…tomorrow, will you let me know you’re okay when you’re finished? Before you leave? I’ll worry otherwise. And don’t hurt Alice, please. She’s really sweet.”

“I can’t have you worried,” he said. “I will let you know and I will not harm your friend. Do not be afraid when I am not here in the morning. Humans sleep most soundly in the pre-dawn hours. That is when I will strike. I will be gone by the time you wake.”

“So, this is goodbye,” she said.

“This is goodbye,” he confirmed. “I am glad I met you, Drala’fa.”

“So am I,” she said. “Goodbye, Thane. And thank you for everything.”

“Goodbye, Drala’fa,” he said.

She retreated to her room before he could see her tears fall and lay in the dark as the moon rose, crested, and began to set. She listened for the sound of movement, though she knew it wouldn’t come. Her eyes burned and her heart ached and she prayed to a god she didn’t believe in that he would come back. For the first time in a very long time, she felt very young. Her first crush was a man sixteen years her senior who belonged to someone else and lived across the galaxy, a man she would never see again.

True to his word, when the sun rose and she forced herself out of her bed to ready the children for school, he was gone. His room was empty and the bed was neatly made. His weapons and clothing were gone from the dressers. There was no sign he had ever been there. A credit chit lay on the counter in the kitchen. Her eyes widened when she inserted it into her omni-tool and checked the balance. It was far more than her work was worth. It was enough to cover the rent for this house for months and to provide more clothing for the kids and food for the gang and windows for Tuco’s mom and to fix up the row house and medications for Alex’ sister and still have money left over. She had never seen that much money in her life. If he really could get his government to use the Reds for their weapons, the gang would be set for life.

Her omni-tool pinged and she opened it to check the incoming message. It consisted of three words: _Do not worry._ He was safe. Frank Vernetti was dead. She felt a moment of pity for Alice Vernetti. The girl had lost her father. It was short-lived, though. She couldn’t be sad that a man who stole other people’s children and sold them into slavery was dead. Some people didn’t deserve to live and he was one of them. Thane had done the world a service. Now, she just had to figure out how to live this new life without him.


End file.
